


Torn Apart

by XnovellaX



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: AFAB reader - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Horrortale (Undertale), Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Cancer, Domestic Violence, Ecto-Penis (Undertale), Ecto-Tongue (Undertale), F/M, Horrortale Papyrus (Undertale), Horrortale Sans (Undertale), Implied/Referenced Torture, Imprisonment, Kidnapping, Mastectomy (Past), Mutilation, Necrophilia, Reader Is Not Chara (Undertale), Reader Is Not Frisk (Undertale), Reader-Insert, Sexual Assault, Soul Bond, Soul Sex, Starvation, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:02:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 9
Words: 22,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28085127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XnovellaX/pseuds/XnovellaX
Summary: “Look, I’m dying.  I’ve got about a couple months left to live, tops.  Probably less.”That big red eye flicks to you, motionless, eerily stone still, as if he’s trying to psychically divine whether your admission is a lie, bloody cleaver hovering mid-swing. Well, at least you seem to have his attention now.You wish it was a lie.  Really, you do.  However the truth is, you’ve been sick for a long time now, and the inevitable bitter end to your lackluster life is likely to come soon.But you want to at least die in peace - not through violence and pain and suffering.  You’ve witnessed and been through enough of that for five lifetimes.“So instead of chopping me up for stew tonight,” you continue, gaining a small bit of confidence, voice steady, “would you be willing to let me live out my last few days down here?"
Relationships: Sans (Undertale)/Original Character(s), Sans (Undertale)/Reader
Comments: 24
Kudos: 147





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> The tags are not a joke.
> 
> Sans is not a nice person.
> 
> This fic is disturbing.
> 
> You've been warned.

“gonna need to move faster than that, tidbit! you’re makin’ this way too easy for me.”

Sans watches the helpless, clumsy, panicked human female scramble across once pristine white snow, now ruined by her crimson blood splatters and flailing limbs. She’s bleeding from the gushing mangled mess of frayed tendons and splintered bone that was once her ankle, chewed up all to hell by the sharp iron teeth of a bear trap, hiking boot clad foot dangling loosely from the joint by a few sinews. This one managed to figure out the latch mechanism and free herself pretty quickly, which impressed Sans slightly, but now the human is just a shambling mess, dragging a long, ragged red trail behind her and sobbing hysterically.

He huffs out a bored sigh, breath leaving behind no vapor cloud despite the frigid cold, slowly strides across the forest clearing toward his victim, lazily twirling his new machete by its leather hanging cord before snatching at the textured rubber handle - a recent garbage dump find, a very lucky one. The durable steel blade was still in good shape and sharpened up beautifully, and it’s much easier to lug around than his hatchet or cleaver.

Despite not even remotely trying to hurry Sans arrives a foot away - _heh…_ \- from the struggling woman within mere seconds. He plants his worn Chucks on either side of her squirming form, narrowed red eyelight glaring down at the pathetic display of desperation beneath him.

“Please, please don’t,” she begs in a high, warbling voice.

Sans tilts his skull, sharp grin twitching.

“don’t what?” he asks through a dark chuckle, tone dripping with mock naivety, crouching down and grabbing her by the neck to cease her obnoxious thrashing about, squeezing hard enough to hurt, but not enough to keep her from breathing or answering. He hates it, _absolutely loathes it_ when humans ignore him. _it’s so fucking disrespectful,_ like they think they’re too good to bother with answering him when he asks them a question, so he ensures she can do so through his light grip.

Luckily for this one, she manages to both freeze, _good girl, stay still,_ and reply between frantic gasps, “D-don’t kill me! Please don’t kill me please _oh god don’t kill me **please!”**_

“aw lambchop, i’m not gonna just **_kill_** you.”

He runs a bone thumb along her pounding, blazing hot jugular a few times, like a tender caress, though there isn’t a single ounce of affection in him. The brief look of confusion on her puffy pink face is almost adorable, but then the inflection of his words sinks into her dumb little brain and she starts hyperventilating. Sans smiles wider and nods his skull, single bloated red iris contracting, pupil a tiny black pinprick.

“oh yeah, i’m gonna do so much more. take my time, see how long ya last.” He grabs her jaw and wrenches her head to the side, further exposing her tender throat - his second favorite part of the human anatomy. She starts shaking hard when Sans leans down and grazes his big teeth against her sweaty skin, runs his glassy blue tongue along that pulsating vein, groaning long and low. “mmm, _fuck,_ you taste delicious. smell good too. been a while since i caught a female…almost forgot how much i like ‘em.”

She cries out when he bites her lower lip, huge sharp canines easily drawing fresh blood, _so sweet,_ tongue lapping it up hungrily in a twisted kiss. When he pulls away a drip of tar black drool streaked with red runs down his malleable bone chin. With a harsh shove he releases his bruising grip on her face and with incredible dexterity simultaneously slices her shirt open right down the center with his machete, running the sharp blade under the fabric and pulling up, and with his other hand reaches below and effortlessly rips a hole in the crotch of her leggings with his distals. _no panties, huh? that’s a shame._ He won’t be able to add to his collection.

“No no no no...” She just keeps repeating that one word over and over as he presses the machete to her throat in a threat to stay still _or else,_ repositions himself to rest on his knees, which he uses to easily push her legs apart. The sound of his jeans fly unzipping makes her whimper but she doesn’t move, _like a good girl,_ not even when he clutches her hip and ruthlessly shoves his conjured cock into her as far as it’ll go against the tightness and resistance caused by her fear. Sans moans out, reaches up and squeezes one of her tits, roughly massaging the gloriously squishy mound before giving it a firm _slap,_ relishing in the shocked yelp it forces from the human’s soft, trembling, bleeding lips.

“damn baby, you’re so tight. but y’know what? bet i can make it even tighter.”

Sans grabs her calf, the injured leg, gently guides it up and back until the knee is by her shoulder, the mangled ankle and grossly dangling foot hanging right by his skull. She screams in pain, causing the machete edge to nick her throat, but still she doesn’t struggle much, _such a good girl, she’s being so incredibly good._ Despite her distress he can feel her getting wetter as he starts to thrust, and because of the pain her cunt muscles keep clenching and spasming around him.

It’s like these human females are _custom made_ to satisfy his depravity, _even hurting her like this can’t ruin how hot and wet and soft she is for me - hell, the pain makes her body respond even better!_

When exactly did he discover these miraculous tricks of female human physiology?

_…huh._

He can’t remember. At all.

“ya like this? yeah, you’re getting so wet for me, you’re being such a good girl too. i might have to keep ya for a while, hide you away in the basement, my special little secret fucktoy…”

She just keeps sobbing _‘no’_ some more as Sans fucks her, quick and fierce, rapidly working himself toward climax, but before he reaches that peak...

“lemme do you a favor, sweetmeats. should make both of us feel better.”

He grasps her shredded ankle just above the wound and brings the machete up, places the blade edge right at the deepest part. Her eyes are so big, staring up at the glinting weapon, _is she really gonna watch me do this to her?! what a crazy bitch!_

The second he feels the first pulse of his orgasm he runs the blade clean through her ankle in one quick, elegant swipe, lopping off the useless foot. Her entire pelvic floor contracts with the shocking pain, practically crushing his cock in the most incredible way as he cums harder than he has in _ages,_ buried to the hilt, pumping her full of his thick magic seed, his bestial roar matching her agonized screaming in volume.

_so good, stars, it’s just so fucking good…_

Sans decides then and there, he’s gonna keep this one around for as long as possible.

**…**

She lasted almost three months down in the basement before he had to let her starve. There just wasn’t enough food available to justify keeping her alive any longer.

He forgot about her completely after a week. Seeing all the containers of his brother’s latest batch of spaghetti sauce stacked in the fridge gave him a tingly feeling for some reason, but he brushed it off, simply pleased that Papyrus had enough to eat again.


	2. Chapter 2

They say those who reach the summit of Mount Ebott sometimes disappear, never to be seen again. Children seem to be the most common victims swallowed up by the peak, many stories of the missing deeply ingrained into the local folklore of the surrounding quaint Pacific Northwest community, Emerald City. The mountain is said to be cursed by everything from man-eating animals to ghosts to demons to monsters of all kinds. As a former forensic psychologist - _the most soul-sucking career ever_ \- your educated guess is that the perpetrators are predators of a human rather than supernatural variety, perhaps the old legends enabling a sick ongoing chain of abduction, pedophiles or serial killers using the stories as a cover for kidnapping and murder in a perpetual self-fulfilling prophecy. After all, if the locals fear the mountain and are just paranoid enough, they’ll eventually give up digging for the truth, for fear of catching the curse themselves and disappearing forever.

Since moving to the area several years ago, to get away from the hectic, toxic lifestyle you once led on the East Coast and live out the last petty remnants of your existence in a more laid-back environment, you’ve become steadily absorbed in the missing persons cases, starting out as simple curiosity but developing into near obsession. Out of habit and boredom, having nothing but free time on your idle hands, you start to make connections, drawing up a rough casefile, going on long marathon stints of research, sometimes for days on end. 

Maybe this is your last chance to do something meaningful with your life...

The project starts to overtake your mind, needing to find the answers others couldn’t or wouldn’t, not even the police - _why hadn’t the FBI ever been notified of this region’s long history of missing children?_ Not to mention the scores of adult tourists recently added to the rosters of those lost in limbo, at least two or three hikers and sight-seers never coming back down the trails each year over the last three decades, especially during late Spring.

That’s when you decide to explore the scene of these endless mysterious tragedies in person, saving up your physical energy for a full week before deciding to tackle the mountain, even buying new hiking boots for the trek - something you’ve never owned before, not being much of an outdoorsy type. With a backpack full of supplies - _maybe too many, but better to be prepared for anything, right?_ \- and a heart full of determination, you ascend the slope, starting out early in the morning, bristling with enthusiasm.

After six hours you’re absolutely exhausted inside and out, that fresh enthusiasm completely gone - but you actually did it! You feel quite accomplished and proud, considering your normally weak physical state. However, the payoff isn’t quite up to snuff, the view largely unremarkable, the small college town spread out below, more low, rolling green mountains to your left and beyond, the Cascades range encompassing the valley with swaths of deep evergreen forest. The air is fresh and thin, straining your lungs slightly, gusty breeze quickly cooling the thin film of sweat on your flushed skin. There’s still crusty patches of ice and snow about, old drifts clinging to rocks and gravel though it’s mid-March. There’s not another soul in sight, alone again, the sole witness to this accomplishment. You don’t bother to take any pics. With nobody to send them to or share them with, having cut off all social media months ago, it’s pointless to do so, and your memories are good enough. Not like social media was ever anything more than an impersonal distraction anyway. There are no family members or real friends connected to you...not anymore.

Dissatisfied, you decide to explore, scoping out potential sites for middens - the hiding places for bones and remains, created by both animals and humans. Over several more hours you wend your way down the opposite side of the mountain, following narrow deer paths and dry creek beds, poking around cliffs and shallow caves, until you come to an exceptionally large cavern opening set within a thin stand of Ponderosa pines. _It’s perfect,_ you think, for squirreling away bodies. 

So you take a deep grounding breath and head inside the cool, shaded, dim hollow…

...not realizing there is someone silently watching, following, stalking you all the while.

Within the cave you soon come upon glistening sheets of milky white ice sheathing the dusty ground, the low roar of wind echoing through the rocks like haunting voices. Everything is deeply shadowed so you use the flashlight on your cellphone to illuminate your surroundings, peering at the ground for any evidence of disturbance. About ten minutes into the cave you find something interesting.

_Very, very interesting._

You stoop down and peer at the object, covered in the same tan silt as everything else, but it’s not a rock or chunk of ice. It’s distinctly shoe shaped, laces and all outlined in detail. And it’s small. Child sized.

This is it. The midden. There will absolutely be more evidence where this came from, you’re sure of it.

Hands trembling, you bring up the Emerald City police department number on your phone, quickly scrolling through contacts, excited yet disgusted, incredibly proud you’ve potentially found a literal goldmine of evidence that could close a plethora of cold case files, but resentful that this might be the resting place of so many abused souls.

But you never get to call the police and tell them of your discovery.

Something hard and heavy knocks you upside the head, sending you tumbling sideways into the fine dirt, vision graying out, mind briefly disoriented. Adrenaline kicks in and you manage to get onto hands and knees, searching for your attacker, wide eyes landing on a dark indistinct human figure standing over you.

“What are you, cops? Feds? Some stupid reporter?” asks a grating male voice, another hard blow striking your raised forearm, luckily protecting your temple but explosively painful nonetheless. You cry out and try to scrabble away, pissed and panicked, lashing out with your feet in an attempt to catch his ankles, but to no avail.

“You fucker! Try that again!” you shout, talking way bigger than your confidence, actually scared shitless. He misses the next strike, weapon thunking against the hard ground by your head, giving you an opening to tackle his legs with a fierce shout, sending the both of you crashing through an ice sheet that crumbles like brittle glass under your combined weight.

You fall. You both fall for what feels like forever, seconds extended into minutes, still clinging to this random guy’s violently kicking legs as he tries to pry you off. Fortunately you manage to resist and hang on as his body breaks the impact against a rocky outcropping, instantly snapping his spine with a sickening _**crack**_ and jarring your own neck, but not enough to really injure you. He goes limp and a few more seconds pass in freefall before landing in something soft and powdery and freezing cold, but not too forgiving, the shock of impacting the hard surface knocking the wind from your chest. You gasp and sputter, momentarily stunned, rolling off the lifeless body under you, overwhelmed by everything all at once - finding the shoe, being attacked, falling down through the cave. For a long moment you lay against your backpack in the cold substance... _snow?_ It feels like snow. Your eyes focus and take in your surroundings, indeed surrounded by what looks like powder snow, white and pristine. There are pine trees, and the sky above is…

It’s night? The sky is pitch black, but devoid of stars or moon or clouds.

Or anything else for that matter. It’s literally just dark. Well, maybe that makes sense, since you dropped through the cave floor and are probably stuck in some sub-chamber. But there are...pine trees? And pale ambient light coming from somewhere is reflecting off the snow. So then, you have to be outside…

_Right?_

With a groan you shake your throbbing head, wondering if you’re dreaming or hallucinating, unable to make sense of where you’re at. Reflexively you touch the epicenter of pain just above your temple and find it wet and sticky, hissing at how sensitive the wound is. That fucker really hit you hard. He must’ve had a rock or a baseball bat or something.

And then you hear slow footsteps crunching through the snow, and a low, smooth voice speak. 

“heh, a twofer...gotta love it.”

The voice catches your attention and you twist around to see who it belongs to.

But you really wish you hadn't.

_There’s a -_

_Man?_

You squint your eyes, trying to force them to focus more on the approaching figure…

...and your blood runs cold at the sight of his face.

_A...skeleton?!_

At least his face is skeletal - white bone, no nose, only a hole, sockets black save for one glowing red iris peering out from a tatty hood. The rest of him is shrouded in a worn blue jacket and heavily stained white shirt, black shorts, his legs...white...bones...

Your mind makes up for the bizarre sight by believing his face is a mask, that’s right, it has to be a mask...and his legs are just...something else...

And there’s a really big knife in his hand.

He twirls it, stops about a foot away.

You dare to look up at him.

His sharp smile stretches wider.

_That’s not a mask._

You’re frozen on the spot, terrified, unable to look away from the horrific being gazing down at you. Your brain screams _run!_ but your legs are jelly and you can’t breathe, head still muddled from the blow dealt by the now dead asshole beside you.

“heya sweetmeats,” greets the skull-faced person in a way that sends a shiver straight up your spine. He stoops down, bringing his terrifying face way too close to yours, but even then you can’t seem to back away, trembling and helpless like a deer caught in headlights. 

“hmm, dinner and dessert? it’s my lucky day.”

“Fuh - f-fuck you…”

The words just tumble out unbidden - _am I fucking insane?! The guy has a knife the size of a goddamned sword and he’s got bloodstains all over his clothes and he just called me dinner and he isn’t human! And the first thing that comes out of my stupid mouth is an insult?!_

But he just smiles even bigger, brings the knife point up to lightly drag along your bruised and bloodied cheek, making you flinch. A wave of nausea hits and you reel, vision fuzzing out, suddenly dizzy - apparently you’re concussed worse than you thought.

The last thing you remember before blacking out is that big red glowing eye, demonic and haunting, staring hungrily at you with a pinprick black pupil as you succumb to head trauma.


	3. Chapter 3

The first thing you sense upon regaining consciousness is the coldness. _It’s so cold._ The floor under you is freezing and hard and the air is frigid. The second thing you sense is the smell of blood, which you believe to be your own, slowly recalling the recent events of being attacked and falling.

And then your eyes shoot open and heart pounds at the recollection of that monster. You’re lying on your side and try to sit up - but you can’t move properly. _What the hell?_ You writhe and squirm but your hands are tied behind your back and your ankles are bound together.

“Hey! _Hey!_ ” you shout in protest and anger, still a bit disoriented, feeling weak but pissed enough to struggle. You peer through the darkness, trying to see if anyone else is around but you’re alone, noting there’s a large table at the far wall, several shelves and cabinets holding tools - it looks like a workshop of some kind.

Something pops behind you but before you can try to see what it is you’re roughly yanked up into a sitting position by your hoodie collar and dragged along the rough wood floor to be propped against a wall. You yelp in shock and surprise and see the same skeletal monster from before standing over you, but his hood is down now…

There’s a big jagged hole in the top of his head - skull?

It makes your stomach twist.

“quiet,” he commands, placing a long, fleshless phalange over his thin grimacing mouth. You just stare up at him in awe, mind trying desperately to process the intricate bones of his hand that move without muscles or ligaments, invisibly bound together, completely impossible but real nonetheless.

The sound of distant voices, loud and angry, snaps you out of your stupor and you strain to hear, breath held, going still.

_...don’t care! We know you’ve been holding out on us!_

_That’s not true! We haven’t -_

_Then how are you all still alive? Huh?_

Another pop of air displacement and the skeleton is instantly gone - _wait, how the actual fuck?!_

_Am I losing my goddamned mind?!_

The voices stop, replaced by the sound of something metallic being hit and a gruff yell, then panicked shouts.

_Aw hell, not him! Let’s get outta here!_

_We’ll be back! The Queen’s gonna hear about this!_

There’s more talking, subdued this time, and then the skeleton reappears from thin air, back turned to you. A low, animalistic growl is coming from him as he quickly stoops down and drags something from a corner by the table - 

_Oh…_

It’s the guy who attacked you.

The monster tosses the body up onto the table with a loud _THUD_ and proceeds to strip it of clothing, inspecting the dirty sweatshirt and parka, stained jeans and black hunting boots, tossing those into one pile on the floor, and the guy’s underwear, socks and wifebeater into another, what must be the discard pile. The stench that comes off the body is disgusting, like the dude hadn’t showered in forever. It makes you gag a little and recoil.

You keep watching, still fascinated by your completely inhuman captor as he reaches for a large cleaver hanging by a nail on the wall, takes it down…

**THUD**

**THUNK**

**C R A C K**

The heavy blade chops into flesh and breaks bone with each forceful, controlled swing.

_The skeleton is butchering the body._

_He wasn’t kidding about having me for dinner…_

_Or was it dessert?_

_Oh fuck._

After everything you’ve been through, everything you’ve survived, this has to be the weirdest way to die ever.

_Definitely didn’t see this one coming._

**_THUNK_ **

**THUD**

THUD

Your panicked mind races to come up with some way to escape this bizarre fate of being eaten by a monster, wrists working against the bindings, sweat beading on your chilled skin, feeling desperate for any other fate but being chopped up and consumed.

So you do the only thing you can - start trying to stall for time.

“Hey, can I ask you something?” 

The monster replies without pausing in his work, THUD, THUNK, CRACK.

“no.”

You decide to ask anyways. After all, what exactly do you have to lose?

_Pretty much nothing...except maybe time._

So you decide to just go for it, an idea starting to form in your head. A kind of crazy idea, but hell, you’ll try anything at this point.

“Can we make a deal?”

“shut up.”

But you keep talking, ignoring his harsh retorts.

“Look, I’m dying. I’ve got about a couple months left to live, tops. Probably less.”

That big red eye flicks to you, motionless, eerily stone still, as if he’s trying to psychically divine whether your admission is a lie, bloody cleaver hovering mid-swing. Well, at least you seem to have his attention now.

You wish it was a lie. Really, you do. However the truth is, you’ve been sick for a long time now, and the inevitable bitter end to your lackluster life is likely to come soon.

But you want to at least die in peace - not through violence and pain and suffering. You’ve witnessed and been through enough of that for five lifetimes.

“So instead of chopping me up for stew tonight,” you continue, gaining a small bit of confidence, voice steady, “would you be willing to let me live out my last few days down here? I mean, you’ve got that poor bastard to eat until then…” 

You casually nod to the very dead and now mangled asshole who got you into this mess in the first place. _What a dick._ You’re kinda glad he’s gonna get turned into goulash.

~~_That’s just how misanthropic you are._ ~~

The skeleton slowly sets his cleaver down upon the chopping block, never breaking eye contact, completely silent. You take it as a sign that he’s interested, or maybe morbidly curious, but perhaps a bit skeptical.

“I can prove it, if you want.”

His iris flicks down to your chest - _wait, does he have x-ray vision or something? Is he psychic? How does he know what I’m referring to?_

“how?”

_Oh, maybe he can’t actually see through me...or read my mind...not like it matters…_

“Um...take my shirt off?”

Wow, saying that is so damn awkward. You flinch and curl up a bit when he rushes down to you, bloodied skeletal hand outstretched, nervously yelp when he roughly grabs your flimsy t-shirt and effortlessly rips away the entire front, sharp distals shredding thin fabric to tatters. Though the light of the shed is dim and shadowed, you can feel him staring at every gory detail of your ruined abdomen, the long, deep, angry scars where breasts used to be, the pockmarks and gashes of many surgeries, the smatters of dark red telangiectasias from radiation therapy. 

“I have cancer,” you admit, but explain further at his blank stare, realizing a skeleton without flesh probably doesn’t really know much about human illness. “A few different kinds...it’s um, a disease where your cells mutate, then they take over your body and slowly eat you alive. Essentially.”

He keeps staring in silence for a long, long time, before finally speaking in a gruff tone.

“who the fuck did this to you?”

_Huh, that definitely isn’t a question I was expecting..._

“Doctors - “ _wait, does he even know what a doctor is?_ “ - uh, people who try to heal sickness...they did it to keep me alive.”

He just looks utterly confused and perhaps slightly horrified, thin mouth pulled into a disgusted sneer, sockets wide. You don’t blame him. He probably doesn’t understand how hacking off and gouging out your flesh could possibly help you survive instead of just kill you faster, especially considering he has no flesh of his own.

Fuck, this is so embarrassing too, even though the guy staring down at your disfigured, repulsive body is a literal monster. You feel like a zombie or something whenever you look into a mirror these days. If you could do it all over again, you would tell the oncologist to go fuck himself and just die with your dignity and diseased boobs intact. You’ve paid for eight more measly, stupid, pointless months of boring life with your body by the pound, and now that time is up.

_It wasn’t worth it._

And now you likely won’t even get your last hurrah of solving the mystery of Mount Ebott. But unless you’re already dead and this bizarre place is some form of Hell, you could at least get to experience something new before you die.

“This might sound kinda weird, but in return for sparing me, I’ll be happy to give my body up for food once I die, since apparently you guys eat humans. Heh...I’m gross, sick and damaged but...any part of me that can be of use, take it. Until then, just let me live a little longer. This is the most interesting thing that’s ever happened to me in my entire life. For real. I wanna experience this place in my last moments...though I know it’s probably a lot to ask...”

You trail off after getting no response and curious if he’s listening you look up at him, standing there stock still and hovering over you, unable to discern his faltered facial expression, wondering if he’s even hearing your words at all.

“What do you think? Is it a deal? You let me marinate for a while, in the meantime I actually get to do something fucking exciting for once, then I die naturally and get turned into burgers. It’s a win-win all around, right?”

Without any sort of acknowledgement he grabs at the bindings around your ankles and tugs the knots loose, then does the same for your wrists, crimson iris boring into your gaze the entire time, terrifying skull face coming much too close for comfort. You’re still not sure if he’s actually agreed to your proposal, feeling confused when you manage to stand and he just walks away. As you zip your hoodie up to cover your exposed chest then absentmindedly scrub some of the dried blood off your sore face with a sleeve, you watch with a kind of detached morbid fascination as your captor wordlessly continues the task of butchering your assaulter, each dull thud of the cleaver hitting bone making your eyelids twitch.

“Welp, I’ll take that as a yes,” you mutter, but he either doesn’t hear you or simply straight up ignores you, continuing on, _thud, thunk, **crack.**_ You eye the door and take a few tentative steps toward potential freedom, glancing back at the preoccupied skeleton, wondering if you can make a run for it - 

“you leave, you die,” he states flatly, warning punctuated by an especially loud _**THUNK.**_

_Don’t have to tell me twice._

So you go sit in a dusty corner of the shed and wait, as far away from him as possible, but there’s no good way to block out the harsh cracking, grating, sometimes slimy sounds of human meat being broken down and processed like any other livestock animal. For a while you contemplate the morality of monsters eating humans, and humans eating pigs, and pigs occasionally eating humans. 

_Would a pig try to eat a monster?_

_Probably._

_Would a human eat a monster?_

_Hmm..._

_Maybe?_

_Would a monster eat a pig?_

You think the answer is definitely.

_But pigs could eat everyone..._

_Does that mean pigs are actually the true apex predator species?_

The obtuse thought makes you giggle a bit and apparently the sound is one that catches his attention, because he glares at you over his shoulder.

“what’s so funny?”

“Oh, I was just thinking about how pigs could eat everyone,” you inaccurately relate without hesitation, laughing a little more at how dumb and nonsensical that sounds. He just stares blankly for a while, watching you giggle about nothing, then gives up on trying to understand you and starts neatly packaging his haul instead.

“Hey, you want some help?”

He freezes up, mid-wrapping, completely still for so unnaturally long that you wonder if he broke or crashed or suddenly went catatonic.

“...you serious?”

You shrug, even though he can’t see it.

“Yeah, sure. I got nothin’ better to do. Might as well pull my weight.” 

Before he can accept or refuse you stand and stroll up to the table, hands on hips, gazing down at the assortment of cuts and parts, some still very much intact and recognizable, others appearing as nothing more than, well, meat. You’re not gonna lie, it’s pretty gross, but you’re a pretty messed up person too, so it all balances out and you can totally handle it. To prove your mettle you pick up a thick steak streaked with fat - _thigh, maybe?_ \- carefully place it in a square of brown paper and neatly wrap it up like they do at the grocery store meat counter. You smirk at your handiwork, satisfied, wipe the blood goo off your fingers with a nearby rag, give the parcel a little pat and glance over at the skeleton guy to see if he approves.

He’s looking at you like you have three heads, huge glowing iris practically vibrating. Okay, fair enough. This is pretty weird, even for you. But it’s not that terrible.

_…is it?_

“what the fuck,” he rasps out, and you suddenly feel judged, which makes you defensive.

“What?” you challenge, tossing your hands up in a gesture of incredulity, as if you’ve done nothing wrong or strange or deserving of his criticism. “Don’t be a goddamned hypocrite! You’re doing it too!”

“you’re really fucked up,” he accuses, but that’s not even offensive to you, because it’s so true.

“Yup!” you instantly agree in a far too cheery tone. With a flash of inspiration you decide to play off your own mental instability and make it a point to really weird him out by picking up one of the dead guy’s eyeballs and putting it in front of your own, pulling it back and forth like it’s zooming in and out on your grimacing monster companion and yelling “Extreme closeup, _woah~!”_

You guarantee he won’t get the Wayne’s World reference, but damn, being this random feels so satisfying.

“Camera one, camera two, camera one, camera two,” you keep on going, switching the eyeball from your left to right, winking the opposite eye each time. You get away with the act for a good ten seconds before the eyeball is snatched from your fingers and tossed back onto the counter.

“Aw, but _**eye**_ was having so much fun,” you mock-complain, throwing in a super lame pun just to be extra obnoxious, thinking he’s probably pissed or at least annoyed as fuck, which is fine by you, but when you look at his face…

 _He’s trying to hold in laughter! For real!_ He’s shaking, grimace turned into a smile that’s way bigger than it was before, and his wide sockets are slightly scrunched up, one browbone raised, iris now big and fuzzy, the pupil dilated. So you have no clue if this is what his laughter face is supposed to look like because he’s impossible to read, but somehow you can just _feel_ that he’s holding back a real laugh at your sick antics, and it makes you break down and laugh for him, even snorting.

“Man, I wish I could show you that movie,” you mention off-handedly, trying to calm your laughter and sniffling a bit.

“what movie?” the monster asks, voice wavering from the effort of not giving in.

“Wayne’s World, that’s where I got all that from - well, except he doesn’t use a human eyeball in those scenes, he uses a camera and his own still-attached eyeballs...”

“ugh, what the fuck,” he reiterates, wiping a skeletal hand down his skull face, but a hearty chucke finally escapes him. “you’re ridiculous.”

“Hey, I try. At least it made you laugh.”

“heh…yeah...”

With the two of you working together and actually concentrating you manage to get it all packed away within half an hour or so, you estimate - you don’t actually have any way to keep track of time. The only thing left is to clean up the mess. 

“There ya go, one crazy douchebag, ready for the freezer.” It’s kind of impressive how many parcels there are. You now have a new appreciation for butchers and hunters who do this all the time. It’s a lot of work.

The monster gathers up the various implements used to filet and saw and slice, tosses them into a utility sink already full of water.

“it won’t last long enough to get frozen.”

He quickly rinses a knife and holds it up by the blade, waving it in a silent order to take it from him. Without hesitation you do, drying it off with a somewhat clean rag and placing it on a nearby shelf with other tools. 

“How’s that? It’s like, what, almost two hundred pounds? Should be enough meat for a good few months.”

“got a lot of mouths to feed.”

He gives you a side glance as he cleans up more, him at the sink rinsing and you wiping down the washed tools and knives, easily working together once more.

“I see…” you mutter, jabbing at the stray eyeball still hanging out on the table with a knife point - somehow it escaped being packaged. “So, you gonna eat that or what?” You’re kind of half-joking, but a part of you has a grotesque fascination of what it might look like if a living skeleton ate something.

Strangely enough he tenses up and grits his teeth, then shakes his skull, plucking up the eye and shoving it into a random meat parcel. You’re totally confused, looking at the package then back up at him, noting a thin thread of black trickling down his chin, which he quickly wipes away with a grubby jacket sleeve.

“Really? Usually butchers get the best bits - and eyeballs are considered a delicacy in a lot of places. How come you won’t eat it? Oh!” You raise a hand in an understanding gesture with a knowing smile, rolling your eyes as if it’s obvious why he wouldn’t just pop the thing right into his mouth. “Duh, it’s gotta get cooked first, right? So what, roasted? Maybe stewed real slow? I had a roasted sheep eyeball once at a Greek wedding, those suckers are crunchy and nasty as all fuck unless they’re cooked for like, ever.”

Yet he remains silent despite your friendly banter, expression once again indiscernible, red eye just staring at you blankly.

Then a theory dawns on you…

“Wait...do you eat humans? Like the people you’re gonna give these to?” You pat a paper bundle. “I mean, look at you, you’re all bones, you’re a skeleton for fuck’s sake...do you even eat at all?”

For some reason you get the sense that your expositioning and interrogating are making him nervous, but he manages to ignore you and start packing away the parcels into a large black duffel bag. You shrug, mildly annoyed, but keep helping him out, shoving the parcels his way as he stacks them in the bag. When it’s full he zips it up and in an easy motion effortlessly hefts it over one shoulder, carrying a two hundred pound sack of meat to the door like it’s a pillowcase full of feathers. You follow after him, amazed at his inexplicable strength - _the guy has no muscles!_ \- stepping out into the frigid wintry night air, making sure to close the door behind you.

“lock it,” he orders without turning to look at you, and you notice a padlock hanging on a bracket above the knob. You obey, clicking it closed and tugging the lock to make sure it’s secure, then quickly trot along close behind, adrenaline spiked at facing the unknown in this strange new world.

The town he leads you through is actually pretty cute, though worn and rough around the edges. There’s not a single soul outside, and all is eerily quiet. Only a few of the cottages have lights on, most looking abandoned for quite some time, fallen into disrepair. There’s a brick building with a sign that reads **G-IL-BY’S** and you guess it used to be a restaurant, but the windows are all boarded up. Nearby is a central town square of sorts, where a shriveled and brown pine tree, still decorated in festive ribbons and ornaments, stands in the center. You stare up at it, baffled - it’s obviously a Christmas tree. _Do these skeleton people celebrate human holidays?_

“Huh, Merry Christmas?” you say incredulously, but fall silent when a figure cautiously walks out from behind the tree. Your captor is between you and the newcomer, so instinctively you’re not too worried - _we made a deal after all, right?_ \- but your nerves still flare at the sight of them, a humanoid bear monster wearing a grimy orange tracksuit. His short brown fur is patchy and his eyes are like glassy black marbles set deep into sunken sockets, clothes hanging loose on his thin frame. You feel more bad for him than afraid - the poor guy looks like he’d fall over if you breathed on him too hard.

 _So it’s not just living skeletons around here, huh?_ You briefly wonder what other sorts of creatures inhabit this strange place, glance up at the featureless sky, unchanged from when you first saw it, black and blank as ever. _Is this place actually inside a cave? Underground? Then how are there trees?_ You’ll have to ask the skeleton about all of it later...

“Sans...should I call the others?” the bear man growls out in a quiet gruff voice. Sans - _apparently that’s the skeleton’s name_ \- unceremoniously tosses the heavy bag of meat onto the packed snow beside the tree and nods. The bear person goes to a brass bell set on posts nearby, rings it three times, sharp metallic sound echoing through the quiet cold air. One by one monsters emerge from their homes and the surrounding woods, some appearing like rabbits and dogs and mice and wolves, others with horns and jagged mouths or feathers and toothy beaks, perhaps thirty individuals gathering around the tree after a while. You marvel at them all, ragged and weak but fantastical nonetheless, the sight of real actual monsters beyond your wildest imagination.

“Why is that one still alive?” calls out a high voice from the crowd, and you tense, knowing they’re referring to you.

 _“touch her and you fucking die!”_ booms out Sans in a deadly tone, his sudden loud warning making you flinch. Some of the monsters flinch as well but nobody else protests or questions Sans - you suppose the one who has the food has the ultimate authority in this place. He stoops down to unzip the duffel bag and one by one each monster steps forward to take a few parcels, some of them glaring at you strangely, but each time they do Sans growls, making them cower and hurry away. You watch the rationing with arms crossed, heart aching at how desperately starved they all look, clearly suffering from what must be a long-standing famine.

“This is awful,” you mutter as the last monster person shuffles away, duffel bag now empty. The bear person hangs back for a moment, nervously peering at Sans, who stares back at him hard, red eye blazing bright.

“what?” Sans sneers, and the bear growls, baring his big jagged teeth.

“How much longer?” he grinds out, foamy spittle forming at the corners of his maw. “We’ve been waiting for far too long, Queen Und - _hrrk!”_

In a flash Sans has the bear monster by the throat in an iron death grip, lifting him an inch off the ground despite their significant height difference, Sans being a good head shorter. 

_“don’t...say...her...name...”_ Sans hisses through clenched teeth, thin mouth unmoving. “and you’ll wait until i say so. keep your fucking trap shut, or you’re dust.”

He easily tosses the monster aside, who hits the snow hard a few feet away, grunting at the impact. 

_Well fuck. So far Sans seems to be the scariest monster here…_

“come on,” he grumbles, grabbing the duffel handle and dragging it along, heading back the way you came.

“What was that all about? Are you guys starving or something? They all look terrible...do they usually look like that?” you ask like an obnoxious kid playing twenty questions.

But Sans remains silent as he enters a two story house next to the butchering shed. Slightly nervous you follow him inside, glancing around at the sparse decor. The space is nice enough, fairly clean. And the air is so mercifully warm.

“SANS! DO YOU REQUIRE ASSISTANCE?” shouts an incredibly loud, grating voice from somewhere nearby, making you startle and gasp. A tall, lanky person strides through an entryway to what looks like the kitchen - 

_…uh…_

_Wow._

They stare at you...with beady little black sockets…

_It’s another skeleton…_

_But their teeth…_

_Oh god...those teeth…_

“ ‘m fine, bro,” mumbles Sans, tossing the duffel bag aside, taking off his gross blue jacket and hanging it on a peg by the front door.

“AH - I SEE YOU HAVE BROUGHT A HUMAN! A LIVE ONE!” The tall skeleton tilts his skull and wrings his red gloved hands together. “WAIT - WHY IS THIS HUMAN STILL ALIVE? OH! ARE WE GOING TO TEST THEM AGAINST MY AMAZING PUZZLES?! IT HAS BEEN ABSOLUTE AGES SINCE WE DID THAT!”

“nah Paps, this one’s different. she’s no good for eating...or at doing puzzles.”

You’re mildly offended and cross your arms with a huff.

“Actually, I’m - “

But you’re cut short by a deadly look from Sans, him not needing to say a single word to instantly shut you up. You were going to defend your puzzle-solving abilities as pretty decent, maybe even above average, but the words die in your tight throat and you swallow loudly instead.

“I SEE! AND WHAT EXACTLY IS WRONG WITH THE HUMAN THAT MAKES THEM SO UNPALATABLE?”

When Sans turns away and heads toward the kitchen, seemingly in a foul mood by his thin grimace and slouchy body language, you decide to speak for yourself.

“I have a disease that’s making my body eat itself,” you try to relate as simply as possible, feeling like this monster probably doesn’t understand what cancer is either. “I’m, um, basically a walking corpse at this point.”

The skeleton - _what had Sans called him? Paps?_ \- peers down at you from his great height, those jagged, stained teeth pulling into what must be a smile.

“WELL, THAT SOUNDS POSITIVELY DISGUSTING!” he proclaims, and you scoff, despite his statement being true. “HOW UNFORTUNATE FOR YOU!”

“Thanks? I think?”

“YOU ARE VERY WELCOME, TINY SICK HUMAN! COME! I WAS JUST MAKING SOME PINE TEA! IT IS QUITE DELICIOUS!”

It’s not the first time you’ve heard of pine needle tea, though you imagine it’ll taste like floor cleaner or air freshener. Whatever, it would be rude to turn down the offer, so you follow him into the kitchen, where Sans is seated at a small dining table with only two chairs. Arms still crossed you lean against a counter edge and watch Paps pour the pale yellowish tea into chipped china cups, then suddenly realizing he needs one more opens an overhead cabinet and grabs a coffee mug. It’s white with black letters that say **BONE-JOUR** with an illustration of a skull wearing a beret. You raise an eyebrow at it and smirk, huffing a quiet laugh at the dumb pun before graciously accepting the steaming mug from Paps. The tea does indeed smell like cleaner, but you grin and bear it, taking a tentative sip.

Yeah...it kinda tastes like cleaner, too. But it’s not terrible, slightly sweet and lemony as well. You make a pleased sound and shrug, take another warming sip. Paps sits at the table with Sans, sipping his tea as well, and miraculously the liquid disappears instead of falling through his jaw or teeth.

_Fascinating..._

“SO!”

You manage to hold onto your mug despite being startled again - _dear God, I’m never gonna get used to how loud this guy is!_

“WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH THIS USELESS HUMAN, BROTHER?”

You roll your eyes and shake your head. _Shit, don’t sugar-coat it or anything ya goddamned bony beanpole bastard...Christ..._

“she’s gonna stay here with us,” Sans mumbles, staring down at his untouched tea, jaw resting in hand, elbow propped on the table, looking bored and irritated. Paps gasps then claps his hands together, a glint in his sockets. How are those pits of darkness sparkly? Who the fuck knows at this point. Nothing around here makes much sense.

“OH MY STARS! A SLEEPOVER?! HOW EXCITING! WE MUST CAMP OUT IN THE LIVING ROOM TONIGHT, SICK HUMAN, AND WE SHALL BUILD A PILLOW FORT AND WATCH MTT SPECIALS TOGETHER!”

You just gape at Paps, bemused - _is he actually a child?_ And then you notice Sans is smiling at his brother’s excitement, but the smile there is completely different than before - soft, fond and perhaps even genuine, not a trace of bitterness or danger in it.

“sounds good, bro,” Sans says gently, and you grin as well. His red eye meets your gaze, that very different smile still on his face...and then the socket containing his glowing iris winks at you.

Somehow it makes you blush and, confusingly flustered, you suddenly become very interested in drinking more tea, looking away and taking an especially long sip.

“I MUST GATHER ALL OF THE PILLOWS AND BLANKETS! SELECT THE ENTERTAINMENT! ENSURE PROPER SEATING AND SLEEPING ARRANGEMENTS! AGH! THERE’S SO MUCH TO DO YET SO LITTLE TIME!”

With an enthusiastic clap Paps leaps up from his seat and jogs out of the kitchen. You watch him go and laugh softly, never having met anyone quite like him before.

“Is he always that energetic?” you wonder out loud, and Sans chuckles.

“yup. that’s Papyrus for ya. he’s the coolest.”

_Papyrus...so Paps is a nickname. These guys certainly have interesting names._

“I can tell you love him a lot,” you observe, tilting your head to the side when his smile falters slightly.

“yeah…i do…” Sans replies, but he sounds melancholy and subdued, making you feel a little bad for bringing up something that seems like a sensitive subject. If there is a famine happening, you postulate, then Sans is probably constantly worried about his brother’s wellbeing, which is understandable.

“I’m gonna go see if Paps needs any help,” you say quietly, setting your mug down on the counter to head out of the kitchen, Sans watching you all the while. But you pause for a moment and tell him “Thank you,” with a small smile, and not waiting for a reply, walk through the entryway. When you come into the adjacent living room you see there’s already a massive pile of pillows and blankets on the old green sofa there. 

_Oh -_ and your backpack is sitting by the TV! You go and grab it, unzip the main compartment to find everything untouched, start unpacking the first aid kit, bottles of water, several granola bars. There’s even an extra pair of socks, a multi-tool and flares. But what you don’t find is your cell phone. It’s probably a thousand feet above on the cave surface somewhere, or smashed to pieces on a rock, or sitting in the snow where you landed. Not like you’d get service down here anyway.

“AHA! I SEE YOU HAVE FOUND YOUR PERSONAL EFFECTS!”

“Yeah, I’m glad you guys kept all this stuff. Want some help?”

“ABSOLUTELY! LET US MAKE THE GREATEST AND MOST MAGNIFICENT PILLOW FORT OF ALL TIME!”

Over the next hour you genuinely have fun constructing a fort around the sofa and chatting with Papyrus, who seems to have a special talent for talking endlessly. He tells you all about the history of his people and of the Underground, that there is indeed an ongoing famine, that a machine called the Core is broken, only supplying magic and electricity sporadically, sometimes shutting down for days or weeks at a time before mysteriously running again. Luckily the brothers have a generator in the basement, though there isn’t always enough fuel oil to run it - Sans has to steal it from someplace called Hotland, which apparently is a risky mission to undertake.

Life here seems difficult and dangerous. After hearing about so much tragedy and hardship, yet witnessing how cheerful and positive Papyrus is, you’re...impressed. It gives you a better understanding of why Sans seems to admire him. Papyrus is a strong, incredibly resilient person, far stronger than you. There’s no way you could ever manage to be that enthusiastic after going through hell like he has. It also puts your own chronic illness in a different perspective, recalling all the times you wanted to give up instead of fight, skip treatments, let yourself just waste away because you felt life wasn’t even worth the effort or cost. If Papyrus had gone through the same ordeal, he would’ve done it all with a smile on his skull and never given up no matter how tough things got.

And another thought - how can you blame them for eating the few and far between humans who fall into their world, considering the dire circumstances? Humans have done the same to each other in the face of death by starvation throughout the ages. Plus you guarantee humans would eat monsters in a heartbeat if the roles were reversed. Absolutely they would.

Those who fall down here are like manna from heaven itself for these monster people. You can’t quite fault them completely, despite being a human yourself. Maybe your misanthropy has something to do with it. Two decades of giving therapy to murderers, rapists and serial killers has certainly tarnished your perception of humanity.

You’re mulling over all of this moral ambiguity while tucked under the pillow fort, laying on your belly shoulder to shoulder with your new friend, watching a rather B-Rate made for TV mini-series. It’s a romance involving a robot and a cat person, though you haven’t really been paying much attention to the plot, being so lost in thought, half-listening to Papyrus’ frequent commentary. With a small smile you wiggle forward, grab two of the granola bars and wordlessly hand one to him, but he makes a worried whine.

“HUMAN, THAT IS YOUR FOOD. I COULDN'T POSSIBLY - “

“Hey,” you interrupt, shoving the bar into his huge gloved hand. “Take it. Might be nice to have something other than greasy human meat for a change, huh?”

“W-WELL YES, BUT - “

“If you don’t eat it, I’ll be terribly offended,” you fib in a melodramatic tone, but it does the trick. With a soft sigh Papyrus unwraps his granola bar and takes a bite, a light rusty orange glow flushing his cheekbones. You follow suit, munching on your own bar without much enthusiasm, not even remotely hungry despite how intense the day’s events were. It’s been a long while since you’ve had any real sense of appetite. Usually you have to set reminders and force yourself to eat something daily. Food still tastes good, it just feels uncomfortable to eat a lot or as often as normal, and your stomach no longer generates any hunger signals. Especially not over the last few months as your disease has steadily progressed.

That’ll be an advantage down here, at least, where there’s not much to eat anyway.

“THIS IS MY FAVORITE PART!” exclaims Papyrus, nudging your shoulder. You watch as the square robot suddenly transforms into a humanoid android body that’s rather sexy, and sweeps the cat person off their feet - _paws?_ The cat person doesn’t seem too pleased when the robot blasts off with rocket boosters coming out of their shoulders, flying over a crowd of monsters cheering and clapping. You openly laugh at how bizarre it all is.

“Wow. That robot sure knows how to make an exit.”

“HE CERTAINLY DOES! METTATON ALSO MAKES EXCELLENT ENTRANCES!”

“Ya don’t say…wait, why is the entire cast dancing now?”

“AH! EVERY METTATON SPECIAL HAS A THIRTY MINUTE LONG DANCE PARTY SCENE HALF WAY THROUGH! IT IS LIKE A FUN INTERMISSION!”

“Uh...interesting…”

After three hour-long episodes you must’ve fallen asleep, because you awaken to see static on the TV and Papyrus gently snoring beside you, sockets closed, splayed out in an awkward position halfway outside the fort. You’re thirsty and so carefully extract yourself from the pillow pile and quietly pad over to the dark kitchen, able to see well enough by the ambient light to find a glass and get some water.

“heya, treat.”

You startle so badly you nearly drop the glass but manage to save it just in time, though water spills onto the counter and you nearly choke. Sans is standing in the entryway, grinning, eerie red eye staring you down with a sort of intense, almost hungry look. 

_God, he is so fucking creepy…_

“Uh, evenin’,” you reply coolly, taking a sip of the water as if everything is absolutely fine and you are not totally creeped out or scared.

“that was real nice of ya, givin’ Paps that snack.”

His gratitude surprises you - _wait...how does he know…?_

“Oh yeah, heh, uh, there’s one left, do you want it?”

Sans shakes his skull but doesn’t break eye contact, takes a couple of steps closer.

“nah...save it.” He leans in slightly, but you stand your ground, heart pounding. “i’ll have somethin' else later.”

The way he says _something else_ makes you nervous as hell and you swallow the lump of anxiety forming in your throat.

“Sure...okay. Well, I’m gonna just go back to bed - I mean the sofa…uh, goodnight.”

When he doesn’t reply, just stares at you with a manic grin, you slowly side step him and half-trot back to the living room, quickly burying yourself under the blankets draped over the sofa, breathing a bit harder than you want to admit.


	4. Chapter 4

It’s still dark when you wake up again, slightly sweaty and overheated from being under so many blankets. You stretch and peek out of the fort, Papyrus nowhere in sight, but you hear activity in the kitchen and figure it must be him. Ugh, you’re sticky and starting to smell kinda gross... _do they have a shower? Wait...do they have a bathroom? Do skeletons use the bathroom somehow?_ You’ve gotta pee too…

“Hey, Paps?” you call out, untangling yourself from the covers and standing with a slight wobble, lightheaded.

“GOOD MORNING, HUMAN!” he replies loudly from the kitchen. You look out the living room window, but it’s still dusk, only a dim gray glow coming through the blinds...oh yeah, you’re in a cave. Duh. It’s a miracle there’s any light at all.

“Do you guys have a bathroom?”

“WHY OF COURSE! IT IS UPSTAIRS AT THE FAR END OF THE HALLWAY!”

“Thanks!”

After a moment you get your bearings and slowly head upstairs, going right until you find the third door at the end of the open hallway that overlooks the lower level. When you flick the lights on you see a sink, and a shower…

But no toilet.

Well, that answers that.

Shower pee it is. Kinda embarrassing, but not much else for it.

The water isn’t terribly warm, but there is a bar of soap, which you happily use, and note the assortment of bath toys in a basket by the tub, which makes you smile. Paps sure is a kid at heart. Or whatever the skeleton monster equivalent of a heart might be. You make sure to be quick with the shower, keeping in mind how sparse the energy resources are, and wrap yourself up in a threadbare towel, wadding up your dirty, bloodstained clothes, unsure what else to do with them.

When you open the door you get another fright courtesy of Sans, who’s standing right the fuck there, looking creepy as ever. You glare at him and he smiles, tilts his skull.

“want something else to wear?” he asks smoothly, and for a moment you feel a little guilty about instantly getting mad at him. 

“Yeah, that would be nice. Thanks.”

With a smirk he turns and walks down the hallway, so you stick with him to the next door over, follow along inside the room. It’s incredibly messy, with crumpled papers and clothes and bits of whatever all over the damn place, every surface cluttered. And...socks? There seems to be an overabundance of socks, hanging off a lampshade, peeking out of drawers, covering the floor, a few on the unmade mattress that lies on the carpet without a bedframe. The sheets are only half way on the bed, one end balled up, no pillows or blankets.

Sans sits on said mess of a bed and gestures to a fairly clean looking gray t-shirt, black sweats and what you recognize as your own spare socks sitting in a heap nearby.

“Thanks…” you mutter, feeling awkward and exhausted. You cough a bit and make a tired sound, having to pause for a moment and catch your breath for no good reason other than, well, actively dying.

“so what’s _eatin’ ya?”_ Sans casually asks with a sly grin, and you roll your eyes at his _**tasteless joke.**_

“A lot of things. Ovarian cancer that metastasized all over...inflammatory breast cancer that got into some bone and my left eye socket, that’s why that eye looks smaller…” you trail off at the realization that Sans only has one good eye. At least both of yours still mostly work. “So uh, I’m guessing you used to have two eyes? And a head without a hole.”

At your question that single red eye goes completely dark and it makes you flinch. With both of his sockets just empty voids he somehow looks way scarier. You hold your hand up and laugh nervously in submission, but from his angry reaction, you’re confident he looks like he does from some kind of horrible physical trauma.

“Hey man, forget about it. None of my business.”

“that fucking bitch took my eye,” he finally grinds out after a long pause, trembling slightly. Of course you’re not sure who he’s talking about, or exactly what might have happened, but his cryptic explanation proves your theory that he was a victim of something tragic.

“I’m sorry…” you reply, anger creeping up your nape. “I uh, hope she fucking rots in hell.”

Sans nods and hooks several fingers into his empty socket, tugging at the bony lower ridge. It’s...well it’s really fucking gross looking, if you’re gonna be perfectly honest, and creepy as all getout. You cringe and lean away slightly, trying to hold back your repulsion, but luckily he seems to be oblivious, lost in thought.

With a sigh you look around, wondering if you should take the loaner clothes into the bathroom to get dressed, but ultimately shrug and just drop the damp towel to the messy floor, honestly not caring if this monster sees you naked. He’s already seen your gross chest anyways, what’s the difference?

“it’s fucking sick.”

You look up at him, confused by his sudden subdued outburst after a lengthy silence.

“What is?”

“what those humans - doctors did to you.”

“They were just trying to do their jobs...help me out...”

“cut ya up to keep you alive, heh. better to just let you die.”

“Y’know, you have a point.”

He growls and tugs at his empty socket again. Ew.

“i hate humans.”

“Me too,” you immediately agree.

He stares at your chest while you pull the sweats on. You’re too tired to care. At least he stops fingering his eyehole after a moment.

“you’re still female,” he mutters, and the weird statement makes you freeze, partially bent over, arms threaded through the t-shirt sleeves. He has no clue how many times you’ve debated that statement in your head, how significant it’s been to your sense of personal identity and self-worth for the past five years.

“Uh, yeah, pretty much.” You put the shirt on the rest of the way and sigh again from stress and depression.

“human females all look similar...monster females all look different...you look different.”

“Oh yeah?” Easily, _so easily_ that comment could’ve set you off, but you manage to play it cool. Does he think you don’t realize exactly how fucking different you look from the average woman now, all hacked up and stitched back together like Frankenstein’s monster? Yeah, that’s right, you’re a monster - that’s pretty much what he just called you, comparing you to his own kind.

“hmm...yeah…”

He’s got that creeper vibe going again, staring you down with a strange, hungry look like last night, but you’re not in the mood to be toyed with, so you put your hands on your hips and scoff.

“What, you hard up or somethin’? Take a damn picture, it’ll last longer.” 

You’re just trying to act casual despite your simmering anger, but then the absurdity of your assumptions hits you and you feel sort of stupid. _Do monsters even have sex like humans? Or do different physiologies mean all different sorts of reproductive methods? Do their bodies need to match up somehow?_

The questions are endless, but you keep them to yourself and smirk at his subtle reaction, something between lecherous and dangerous, eyelight narrowing and tight grin hitching crooked.

“maybe i am.”

Welp, you weren’t exactly prepared to discuss this topic, but so be it.

“So you uh, got a girlfriend? Or boyfriend? Or...other...partner?”

“do i look like the type?”

“Fuck no,” you reply bluntly without hesitation. He chuckles.

“neither do you.”

_Wow! What a fucking asshole!_

“Hey now, I used to get around, had a few serious relationships. Probably got laid more than you ever have.”

“so you were a real slut then, huh?”

Okay, you definitely weren’t expecting him to say that. Funny how a male of a totally different species still pretty much talks like a typical one. A typical _shitty_ one. You grit your teeth and flip him the bird, which only serves to make him laugh more.

“heh heh heh, oh yeah, definitely a slut.”

“Fuck you.”

“i don’t usually play with my food.”

_Is this guy for real?_

“ _Psh_ , whatever. You don’t even actually eat humans.”

“not in that way, at least...”

_Did he just say - ?! For real?!_

You’re incredulous and surprised, letting out a hearty laugh at his raunchy humor, but also now very curious about something in particular.

“...have you really done it with a human before?”

He shrugs and smirks, and it annoys you to no end that he won’t give a straight answer. Damn, you barely know the guy and he can already push your buttons!

“Seriously Sans, have you or not? Don’t act all coy and shit! Just tell me!”

In a blink he’s off the bed and right in your face, so fast you don’t even have time to react when he grabs one of your shoulders and quickly shoves his other hand down the front of your loose sweatpants, distals instantly finding your clit and rubbing fast for just a second. Then he forces two knobby bone fingers right between your folds, managing to get a few knuckles deep inside despite the reflexive pressing together of your thighs. You literally scream from the sudden ambush and try to double over, but his vice grip on your shoulder keeps you upright. Grabbing at the arm attached to the hand violating you has zero effect. He’s ridiculously strong.

“does that answer your fucking question?” he growls, ruthlessly fingering you so roughly your knees nearly buckle.

“Fuck!” you yell, excited yet completely freaked out. “Yeah! _Yes! **Oh my god!”**_

Just as quickly as he started he stops, pulls out and backs away, watching you grasp at your crotch and shiver, panting, still in shock. You look up just in time to see him licking off his damp phalanges with a long, thick, translucent blue tongue.

_Woah...oh fuck...what the fuck...holy shit…_

You stare at him in disbelief - both at the fact that he just jumped you, and at the sight of him being totally lewd, peering at you with a smug, self-satisfied leer as he tastes your slick and softly groans in satisfaction, as if he’s eating something delicious. And then it really hits you...there’s a glowing blue tongue coming out of his mouth.

_...a skeleton with a tongue…?_

Your gutter drain of a perverted mind instantly conjures up all sorts of inappropriate imagery with that freakishly long tongue, but you quickly shake your head to clear it.

“Yeah, okay, yeah, you uh, you know your way around a lady’s junk,” you mutter, managing to stand up straight while readjusting your waistband. “Ugh, wow. _Fuck.”_

“mmm. wanna know a secret?”

You’re still a little stunned but reply “Sure, I guess?”

He saunters over to the door and for a minute you think he’s going to just leave you hanging, being an unpredictable weirdo. But he pauses and turns his sockets toward you, both of them completely blank again. It actually scares the shit out of you, seeing those hollow, empty, lightless sockets staring at you like that, so now you're turned on _and_ afraid.

“all females look the same in the dark. monster, human...whatever.”

It takes you a beat to pick up what he’s laying down, and then with a click the lights go off and your heart almost explodes as the room is plunged into absolute pitch darkness.

“but i gotta say, you tender little humans really do feel the _best_ on my cock.”

You hear what must be the door lock click and you swallow, not daring to move, fight or flight instincts kicking in. His red eyelight is still missing so you literally can’t tell where he is, and he’s so silent…

_Wait…_

_His…he just said he has a...?_

“and you all taste so fucking good.”

His deep rumbling voice is right next to your ear and you jump a good six inches off the floor, it startles you so badly! But his hard arms quickly wrap around your waist and his teeth nip at your nape, both a warning and a trap, preventing you from breaking away. A frigid slickness runs up your neck and soft dusky blue light illuminates your vision for a brief moment, that crazy tongue leaving behind a tingling plasmodic trail that makes you shudder.

“Uh - h-hey, Sans, I um - we - “ you stammer, unable to put together a complete sentence, incredibly nervous, but your bumbling words are cut short anyways by a rough grope to your crotch that makes you yelp.

“shut up,” he growls, harshly shoving you forward to stumble and flop belly down on his bed, bent over at the waist, knees hitting the carpet, “and spread ‘em.”

Despite how _absolutely fucking wrong_ this situation would normally be, you eagerly drop trow and gap your thighs, even reaching behind and tugging your lips open wide for him, knowing you have nothing to lose at this point. Hell, it’s been forever since you got laid, and this is pretty much a golden opportunity. Apparently your obedience and enthusiasm please him because he chuckles softly before more blue light illuminates the room, and you put two and two together - _it’s gotta be like his tongue!_ He clutches your hips and wastes no time pressing inside, blunt and thick and _so cold_ , like menthol covered glass filling you up. It’s unsettling, how frigid it is, but smooth, slick and almost electric as well, not to mention gloriously girthy.

The blue light dims as you feel him impatiently shove in harder, taking over the task of keeping you spread open with his bone thumbs at either side your labia, long phalanges gripping your asscheeks. You moan lustily in response to the forceful penetration and his sharp distal tips dig dangerously hard into your tender flesh as he starts thrusting quick right off the bat, relentlessly pushing past and through any resistance. A few moments of raw friction make you cry out, but soon his glassine magic and your wet excitement have him easily pulling long, deep strokes at a relentless pace.

_This is insane…_

_But it’s fucking amazing!_

“Ah, _fuck yes,_ tear me up!” you shout, becoming near delirious in mere minutes, grasping at the rumpled sheets under you for dear life. “Harder, _fuck me harder, **harder!"**_

The laugh that comes out of him at your profane begging is dark as he obliges and goes faster, cock tip repeatedly slamming your limit so hard it hurts, but _god it hurts so good._ Those clawlike distals really dig in and break skin, then one hand rakes down your back, leaving behind harshly stinging tracts that bead with tiny blood droplets. You arch your spine, toss your head back and wail with pained pleasure, wincing when he catches your hair up in his phalanges and gives a stiff yank, jerking you rhythmically with each harsh impact.

“mmm, who owns this sweet pussy, huh?” he growls, and his unexpected dirty talk makes your inner walls twitch and tighten with desire.

“You do, oh my god it’s yours, _fuck yes my cunt is yours!"_ you cry out through strained whimpers and gasping moans.

“that’s right, you’re my fucktoy now, _mine."_

As he grinds out the words his thrusting becomes erratic and suddenly his sharp teeth gouge your back right below the shoulderblade, canines sinking down to the bone, blood gushing freely, thick hot rivulets running down your skin and soaking into the bed. You scream bloody murder and writhe under him but there’s no escape, feeling the vibration of his primal groan through the vicious bite when his chilling magic powerfully pulses inside you, sending a wave of frigid shock up your spine. White phosphene lights burst across your vision as the magic hits your brain and it forces something like an orgasm out of you, body shaking and spasming in response to the torrential flood of viscous, freezing cum.

With a low grunt he releases his bite, shoves your face into the mattress and untangles his knuckle joints from your hair, ripping a few strands out, placing the hand back on your asscheek to give it a rough squeeze and a hearty _smack_ before yanking his cock out, commingled fluids trickling down your inner thigh. You barely feel any of it, bizarrely numb from his magic coursing through your veins and settling like icy slush into your marrow and guts, paradoxically burning from the cold, twisting your stomach into knots. You moan and pant, somewhere between wrecked and high, dewy body limp and leaden, feeling completely spent in every way.

“Holy fuck,” you groan into the bloodstained sheets, laughing a bit at how random but satisfying it all was. You’ve always liked it rough, but very few partners were ever willing to go as far as you truly desired.

This is exactly the kind of sex you’ve been secretly craving.

_Forever._

“That was amazing,” you praise before managing to crawl up onto the damp, dirty bed and flop onto your back - _damn, it stings like a sonofabitch_ \- only adding to the stains, you’re sure. After a moment his bright red iris glow comes into sight, the weight of his body lowering the mattress at either side as he hovers over you on hands and knees, smiling skull face starkly shadowed in deep black, blood smeared bone tinted with crimson light.

_Wow...he definitely looks like a monster now…_

“you’re really kind of a freak, huh?” he purrs, lowering his scary face down close to yours. You smile back, now unafraid, nibbling on your lower lip and cocking an eyebrow. 

“Maybe I am,” you readily reply in your best sultry voice, daring to close the small distance between you and lick along his jaw, tasting your own metallic blood there, fingertips finding his clothed ribs and slowly dragging down them. The reaction you get from him is surprising, a soft growling moan and slight shudder, his teeth parting to huff out a quick cold breath when you experimentally stroke his ribs again. His responsiveness is satisfying, encouraging you to lap up more blood from his chin and run your palm along his sternum.

“You like that?” you whisper, making a pleased hum when he meets your tongue with his own in a strange kiss, magic crackling and sparking, the sensation completely unfamiliar but addicting. He’s actually quite skillful in his motions and you’re remiss to let him pull away, but the sight of his lustful expression - fuzzy iris narrowed with darkness, pupil dilated, sharp smile replaced with a thin grin around parted teeth backlit by that miraculous dusky blue tongue - gets you going all over again.

“yeah,” he mutters around shallow panting, breath hitching when you take a gamble on using your nails to lightly scratch his clavicles peeking through the collar of his shirt, wondering at how his sensitive bones can feel your touch.

“Wanna fuck again?” you suggest, rubbing your thighs together in anticipation, and his grin widens.

“fuck yeah.”


	5. Chapter 5

You have more sex over the next two days than you’ve had in the last decade, eventually being forced to practically beg your seemingly insatiable new lover for a shower and a break when barely sleeping and not eating anything coupled with constantly working up a sweat finally takes too much of a toll on your weakened body. You’re sore, dehydrated, bruised, scabbed up and actually hungry for the first time in years.

Unfortunately, while there’s plenty of cold, clean water to drink, you discover there’s not much in the way of food you want to eat - or can actually eat at all. When you emerge from the bathroom and limp your way downstairs to the kitchen, Sans himself currently passed out on his ruined bed, you open the fridge to find nothing but plastic and glass containers of so-called spaghetti sauce. Knowing from Papyrus’ own admission that it’s full of ground up human meat, something that could rapidly make you deathly ill if tainted with even the smallest amount of brain or spinal tissue, you sigh and weakly shut the door, opening up the freezer and cupboards and drawers, but coming up empty handed. You do still have that last granola bar in your backpack, but it should be used as a last resort. If you’re patient, maybe someone will find other food soon.

But realistically, at this rate, starvation or exhaustion might kill you way before the cancer does…

“AH! HUMAN! ARE YOU SEARCHING FOR SOMETHING TO EAT?”

With a slight start you turn to see Papyrus standing in the entryway and smile wanly at him.

“Yeah...sorry. I know there’s not really anything…”

“NONSENSE!” he shouts, striding over to the far end of the kitchen and opening an upper cabinet you haven’t checked yet. With a silly flourish he plucks down a small silvery packet and extends his long arm in offering, an inexplicable glint to his beady sockets. With a bemused smirk you accept the packet and read the print on it - _Astronaut Ice Cream. Neapolitan Flavor. Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. Always Exploring._

“Woah, where did you find this?” you ask, incredulous, looking for an expiration date but finding none, only indecipherable numerical codes. Not like it really needs one, right? This is space-grade nosh, after all.

“IN THE GARBAGE DUMP, OF COURSE! OR RATHER, SANS FOUND IT THERE SOME TIME AGO!”

You’re about to tear into it, stomach churning, but then think better of doing so, guilt creeping up your spine.

_What about Sans? He has to be feeling just as starved..._

“Thank you, Papyrus. This is very generous of you.”

“ANY TIME, HUMAN! PLEASE ENJOY!”

With a nod you head upstairs, quietly slipping back into Sans’ room, padding over to the bed and sitting at the edge. For a moment you just watch him sleep, his sockets open and dark, looking like nothing but a dead skeleton if not for the steady breathing causing his ribcage to slowly rise and fall.

“Hey,” you whisper, reaching out to touch his sternum, but just before your fingertips come into contact he grabs your wrist with lightning speed, making your breath catch in your throat, his rough phalanges gripping tight. His bright iris flickers into existence, staring hard at you, but then narrows in recognition, pupil dilating, grip on your wrist easing. “Sorry,” you apologize, and he sits up, letting go of you completely. “Here, Papyrus gave this to me, but I wanted to share it with you.”

Sans glances down at the packet you hold out, then back up to meet your kind gaze. His thin mouth pulls into a frown, and he pushes your hand away, rejecting the food.

“you need it,” he mutters. “i don’t.”

You shake your head in both disbelief and lack of understanding. “How? It’s been days and I haven’t seen you eat a single thing. Even Papyrus eats...look, I don’t want you to starve, okay?”

“i won’t,” he states simply, without explanation. When you just stare at him he huffs and snatches the ice cream from you, tears open the foil and breaks off a piece of the striped, dehydrated block, leaning forward to bring the bite up to your lips. 

“eat,” he commands, and you reluctantly obey, opening your mouth and letting him feed you. It’s definitely stale and strange, like eating sugary styrofoam, but your body flushes with warmth at the needed intake of nourishment. He steadily feeds you the whole thing, tilting his skull and parting his teeth each time you take a morsel.

When you finish he tosses the wrapper to the floor and gently runs his distals through your mussed, damp hair in an unexpectedly tender gesture, tongue snaking out to lick across your lips and meet with your own, the sweet kiss soon evolving into much more. He strips you bare and lays you back, and for a moment you contemplate asking for a pass, still feeling worn and sore, but when his smooth, cold tongue slowly trails all the way down to between your thighs, any and all protest dies on your lips, a soft gasp escaping instead as he languidly laps at your aching slit. The cooling, tingling sensation is heavenly, soothing yet incredibly stimulating as well. Ironically this is one of the few things you haven’t experienced with him yet, but you’ll definitely want to ask him to do it again later.

“Mmm, that feels so good,” you sigh, watching the glow of his tongue fade then brighten every time it runs along the length of you, tip expertly swirling over your clit with each pass, your face blushing hot when his eyelight flicks up to give you an intense stare while he pleasures you, the look in his iris somehow salacious and provocative. In practically no time at all he brings you to a gentle climax, warm waves of ecstasy washing over your body as he works you through, drawing out your orgasm until you subtly shift your thighs to let him know you’re getting oversensitive. He withdraws and crawls up over you, hands planted on either side of your head, long tongue licking your cum off from around his mouth, never breaking his gaze.

“Thanks,” you breathe with a satisfied grin, and he sinks down to give you another kiss, deep and slow, mouth still wet with your slick. You make a point to help clean it off, happily licking along his chin and jaw with a pleased hum. He closes his sockets and growls low in appreciation, making you smile. “I guess you do eat after all, huh?” you quip and he chuckles, pulling away and laying next to you.

“better than dry ice cream.”

You giggle a little and pull your sweats back on, feeling slightly chilled. “Yeah, that shit was pretty weird, but I can’t complain.”

Sans puts his hands behind his skull and smirks. “me either.”

“Wanna go watch a movie?” You sit up and throw on your loaner shirt - at least you think it’s the same one. There’s clothing strewn everywhere, it could be a totally different shirt, but whatever. Without answering he pulls you back down onto the bed, an arm wrapped around your waist, making you clumsily fall against his hard body. You roll your eyes and scoff, pouting a little. “C’mon Sans, we can’t just stay in here and fuck around forever!”

“wanna bet?”

“I still need a break. Besides, Papyrus is probably getting lonely at this point, don’t you think?”

Sans grimaces but begrudgingly relents, letting you out of his grasp and off the bed, following along as you head back down the stairs. Papyrus is now on the sofa, already watching something - what looks like a romance movie, from the way two human characters are locked in a tight embrace, muttering softly spoken lines with breathy, subdued voices.

“Whatcha watchin’, Paps?” you ask cheerfully, and Papyrus scoots over with a toothy smile to let you sit in the middle, Sans sitting at your other side, slouching into the corner with an arm draped along the back of the sofa behind your head.

“I AM SO GLAD YOU ASKED! IT'S CALLED _THE NOTEBOOK!_ DEFINITELY ONE OF MY ALL-TIME FAVORITES!”

You grin at the fact that Papyrus loves romances so much. Despite his intimidating appearance, he really is a sweet guy on the inside.

“I actually saw this movie on a date once,” you relate, leaning back to rest your head against the sofa cushions, Sans’ bony forearm sliding down to slip around your shoulders. It’s bizarre how casual, comfortable and perfectly domestic this moment feels - like you’re hanging out with people you’ve known forever and it’s just another lazy weekend night, watching a movie and chatting as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. Your cheeks warm slightly and you subconsciously lean toward Sans a bit more, his distals tracing small circles on your upper arm.

“OH MY STARS! YOU’VE _DATED?!”_ exclaims Papyrus, hands clasped and cheekbones flushed with amber glow, that impossible sparkle in his beady sockets again. “PLEASE TELL ME ABOUT YOUR DATE INVOLVING THIS MOVIE! DID THE COMPLEX PLOTLINES AND EXCELLENT ACTING INSPIRE ROMANCE BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR DATEMATE?! DID THEY LOVINGLY FEED YOU HAND-CRAFTED PASTA WHILE DRESSED IN THE FINEST ATTIRE?!”

You can’t help but laugh at how over the top and eccentric Papyrus' example is. “No no, it wasn’t nearly that epic! We just watched a few movies, had a pizza and drank too much cheap wine. I think that was the only date we ever had. She was kinda boring and had a lot of personal issues, so it didn’t work out.”

“I SEE! WELL, PERHAPS SOMEDAY YOU AND I COULD GO ON AN EPIC DATE UNLIKE ANY YOU HAVE EVER EXPERIENCED - PLATONICALLY, OF COURSE - ONCE WE ARE FREE AND LIVE ON THE SURFACE TOGETHER! I AM AFRAID THE UNDERGROUND DOES NOT HAVE MANY RESOURCES FOR A PROPER DATE AT THIS TIME!”

His hopeful postulating tugs at your heart with mild melancholy, recalling how Sans had fought with that bear monster over how much longer they’d have to wait for the freedom Papyrus told you about, the far-off dream of going to the surface that every monster used to hope for. Your smile falters and you glance up at Sans, whose sockets are dark, so you take it upon yourself to give Papyrus an encouraging reply.

“Yeah, that’ll be great! There’s all kinds of places we’ll go once we get out of here…you’ll have the time of your life, Paps.”

With a happy nod Papyrus turns his attention back to the movie and you follow suit, feeling like you’re lying to keep a little kid believing in Santa Claus or something, perpetuating that hopeful fantasy for the sake of preserving his innocence. You feel hard phalanges give your arm a firm but gentle squeeze and lean against Sans in an attempt to glean some comfort, resting your head in the spot between his ribs and clavicle, shoulder pressed up against his ribcage, holding in a sigh. If anyone deserves to go on a fabulous date someday in the human world, it’s Papyrus. You bet he’ll really appreciate all the world has to offer if he ever gets out of here, really live his life to the fullest...

_Unlike me..._

Silence settles the air once again as you all watch the sad romance movie, until you slip off into a dreamless sleep, exhausted in more ways than one.


	6. Chapter 6

The week wears on, largely uneventful, days spent watching TV or playing board games with Papyrus, nights spent sleeping, or rather not getting much sleep, with Sans. No other humans fall down into the woods, but Sans manages to find edible things here and there from his daily scouting - a single dusty packet of instant ramen that expired several years ago, some canned dog food weirdly enough, and a plant called _water sausages_ that look like cattail spikes but taste like a mix between hotdogs and mushrooms when fried up. Those vegetable sausages were your favorite thing to eat by far, and you felt terribly guilty when Papyrus vehemently insisted they all be for you, only eating his spaghetti sauce and Sans, of course, eating nothing. At least Paps still has plenty of said sauce left to keep him going. 

You make sure to hide the last granola bar in their freezer behind some containers - not for yourself, but hopefully as a nice little surprise for Papyrus someday, after you’re gone.

One evening - _is it evening? So hard to tell…_ \- you’re getting dressed in Sans’ room after another tepid shower when curiosity tugs your gaze over to a small bookshelf near the desk, where there’s several books lined up and more scattered over the floor, some haphazardly stacked. With a smirk you squat down and inspect the titles:

_The Search for Schrӧdinger's Cat_

_1001 Puns, One-Liners and Short Jokes_

_Astronomy: The Evolving Universe_

_The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_

_Modern Quantum Mechanics_

_Linear State-Space Control Systems Analysis_

_Inner Space/Outer Space_

_The Collected Series of Arthur C. Clarke_

_Mastering Stand-Up Comedy_

_The Midnight Library_

Those are just a few of the titles you take in at a glance and your eyebrows raise at the mix of heavy academia and science fiction interspersed with cheesy joke books. There definitely seems to be an outer space and sci-fi theme going, and you randomly pick the heavy astronomy book to slide out. It’s a college textbook, cover well worn, the pages rippled and slightly stiff from moisture damage as you flip through them. A bit lost in thought you sit on the bed, smiling at the discovery of this previously unknown side of Sans, grazing through the chapters on the near solar system and wondering when the last time he even opened this book was, noting the top page edges are coated in a thin layer of dust. Then a thought occurs to you - _has he ever even seen the real night sky before?_

_Probably not..._

Your heart aches at the realization that perhaps all the books related to outer space are tied to one of his dreams, a longtime passion for studying astronomy fueling an ideal ambition he hoped to fulfill one day, when the barrier was broken and monsterkind went free…

_A dream to see the stars._

Long ivory phalanges creep over the pages and you quickly look up to see Sans standing there, his expression indiscernible, but you sense there’s an air of melancholy about him, reflecting what you feel in your heart. Gently, he takes the book away, closes it without looking at its contents, sets it aside on the cluttered desk.

“Didn’t mean to pry,” you attempt an apology, unsure if he’s irritated at you touching his personal belongings. “But I noticed you have a thing for astronomy, huh? Physics, too.”

For a few beats he’s still and silent, gazing off at nothing, you knowing he does so when trying to think, having picked up on some of his odd mannerisms over the past week.

“i think...i used to,” he quietly replies, and the aching in your chest doubles.

“You don’t remember…?”

Sans barely shakes his skull, distals briefly ghosting near the jagged hole in his left cranium, sockets wincing as if the damage is painful without even touching it.

_He has amnesia from the trauma…_

Unsure what to say or how to comfort him, you silently wait, watching him work through something in his mind, worry knitting your brow when that strained, sharp, dangerous smile spreads across his face, phalanges briefly cupped over his mouth. Then his wide, blazing bright eye turns to you, perfectly round, and for the first time in days you’re genuinely scared of him.

“I really like astronomy too,” you say with as much confidence as you can muster in an attempt to keep him talking, keep him distracted from his own frantic, potentially dangerous thoughts - a technique you learned long ago for dealing with those in an unstable mental state. “I used to watch a lot of Nova reruns with my grandma - it’s an old show about outer space and nature. My favorite planet is Jupiter because its atmosphere is unique and it has so many cool moons. Especially Europa. They say there might be alien life under the ice…”

Miraculously your casual babbling seems to do the trick as his eyelight narrows with shadow, smile faltering into a thin grin. The sudden feel of his distals lightly running through your hair interrupts your talking and you blush slightly when he tentatively takes your hand, coaxes you to stand up.

“hold on to me,” he commands, without any context, but despite being confused you do so, wondering if it’s his odd way of asking for a hug. You wrap your arms around his hard shoulders and he wraps his around your waist, pulling you in close, face buried in your neck. It’s nice, intimate and unexpected, feeling glad you can offer him at least a little bit of comfort.

However the sentimental moment is cut short when a split second later the floor disappears from under your feet and all goes black, the feeling of free fall making you tense and yelp, clinging hard to Sans in your surge of fear. Just as quickly cool moist air rushes against your face and solid ground returns, your stomach lurching from vertigo, as if you’ve just experienced a steep drop on a rollercoaster. Sans holds you steady though, and once you regain your bearings the sight of your new surroundings catches the breath in your lungs.

You’re inside an unfamiliar cavern chamber, stalagmite covered walls and floor made of deep indigo stone, a nearby wide pool of neon aqua luminescent water fed by a thin, high waterfall lighting the surreal scene. Dimly glowing pink crystal clusters edge the pool, shaped like spires of quartz, some easily as tall as you. It’s like being on another planet, everything so surreal and fantastical and magical.

“Oh my god,” you gasp in awe, still clinging to Sans, who quietly chuckles against your neck and raises and arm to point upward with one phalange. You follow his directive and gasp even louder - the entire cavern ceiling is covered in sparkling, shimmering pale blue pinpoints of light that almost look like stars in the night sky. To say it’s stunning would be an understatement.

“This is incredible!”

“is it like the real sky?”

His muttered question makes your heart twinge and you’re tempted to lie, to say this is just like that or maybe even better, but you reluctantly shake your head and sigh.

“Not quite...the sky up there is always different each night, stars are mostly white and there’s more of them. And then there’s the moon…” you trail off, not wanting to discourage or depress him further. Then stubborn hope swells in your chest and you give his shoulders a squeeze. “Hey, if we get out of here, the first thing we’ll do is go stargazing!” You laugh a bit, though there’s a hint of bitterness in your tone. “Well, maybe after we get something good to eat.”

Sans leans into you, holding you tighter, hard mouth pressed into your nape. A light nip there from his teeth makes you subtly jolt, then another, followed by the barest tingle of his tongue grazing over the tender spots. It must be a sign of affection, you realize, so to return the gesture you give a few quick, gentle kisses to his hard temple.

Slowly, he pulls back to face you, his expression one that makes your heart flutter, not so much from the literal way he appears but from an inner sense of how he _feels_ inspiring your reaction. For all his scary features and broken parts he’s entrancing to you, lost in the glow of his deep gaze, time slowed, mutual desire and comfort and affection radiating between you.

If this was another time, another place...perhaps you could admit to falling in love at that very moment.

But knowing just how little time you have left closes off your heart and dampens the growing warmth there, pushing away any possibility of acknowledging such complicated emotions. _I don’t know him,_ you say silently in your mind and glance away, an excuse, a denial, somehow feeling ashamed despite doing nothing wrong. 

_He’s unstable...he's a killer...it’s wrong…_

_Yet here I am...in his arms...and in his bed every night._

Sans cups your cheek in his cool hand, bringing your gaze back to meet his. That warmth blooms in your chest again, unbidden, unable to be repressed, like a spell has been cast on your troubled, conflicted heart. All resistance and resolve melts away when he kisses you, and it feels _completely different_ \- he’s done so many times already, but it’s never been this gentle, this tender. His phalanges slide down to encircle your neck but don’t press in hard, only lightly grip, rough bone thumb running along smooth, thin skin. You moan around the kiss, excited by his intimate touch, not the first time his hand has been at your throat in this way. The gesture isn't a threat, but rather a symbolic reflection of your dynamic, of his absolute dominance and your complete submission.

His other hand slips under your shirt and firmly grasps the small of your waist while yours run along his cloth covered ribs, hands snaking into either side of his jacket, fingers tracing over his bones just how he likes, getting those wonderful, satisfying, needy groans out of him, sounds you’ve come to appreciate so much during your brief time together.

When he tugs on the hem of your sweats you whimper in questioning - _here? Now?_ Sans answers by quickly shrugging off his jacket, tossing it to the stone ground and pushing you down by the shoulders to lay upon the makeshift cushioning, barely breaking his hungry, nearly desperate kissing. He only pulls off one leg of your sweats, not bothering with the other, like he’s suddenly in a rush for some reason, already panting before he even gets the waistband of his own sweats down far enough to free his conjured magic. Like a monster possessed, like he’s starving for this intimacy, he doesn’t hesitate to bury himself inside you, his bones enveloping you in a tight embrace, mouth locked with yours, shuddering ribcage pressed against your heaving chest. You wrap your legs around his pelvis and moan, skin prickling with heated passion, grasping at his scapulae as your bodies move together, the sounds of your lovemaking echoing through the vast cave.

This is unlike anything you’ve done with him thus far, full of emotion and fervent need, heart bursting with affection tinged by sadness. In the back of your mind you wonder if it’s all yours and yours alone, this swirling, intense, tumultuous sea of feelings mixed with pleasure and desire, or if somehow you’re sharing more than just your body with Sans, connected on a deeper level you didn’t know was possible. Pain is there as well, intense, deeply seated pain, heavy melancholy, a sense of regret you can’t quite explain. It only makes you hold onto him tighter, kiss him back harder and want to ease that raw ache in any way you can. 

Tears well up, sting your eyes as he breaks away, gazing down at you with a look that reflects everything you’re feeling, and instinctively you know, _you just know without a doubt_ that it’s true - both his pain and yours is written there on his magic flushed face. He shakes his skull, shuts his sockets tight and sinks back down to you, cradling your head and huffing into your neck, motions rapidly becoming more desperate.

“i can’t...i can’t...i can’t,” he quietly chants into your ear like a mantra through quick cold breaths, low voice cracking slightly. You try to comfort him in the midst of it all, shushing and peppering his jaw with light kisses while whimpering from how hard and erratic he’s thrusting.

“Please,” you breathe, unsure of what you’re even begging for, only knowing it’s what you want, what you _need and desire_ more than anything else in this very moment. “Please, Sans, please, _please - !“_

With a rumbling snarl Sans yanks aside the collar of your shirt so hard it tears and sinks his teeth into your taut trapezius muscle, canines easily slicing through skin and sinew, their points hitting bone, hot blood rushing through the wounds into his wide gaping mouth.

You scream out in shock, nails digging into his scapulae, bearing down and contracting from the indescribable pain, setting off his explosive orgasm, the violent torrent of his magic flooding and overtaking the entirety of your being. Mind and vision go blank, momentarily in a state of detached weightlessness before it all comes crashing down, crying and shaking and screaming again as every muscle in your body tenses with the most intense climax of your life. For what feels like an eternity you’re uncontrollably spasming and trembling, Sans greedily gulping down your blood and pumping his thick magic cum into you, so much it gushes around his cock, flowing down to the jacket beneath you, forming a dimly glowing blue puddle on the fabric there.

Dizziness hits and you reel, eyes rolling back into their sockets, body succumbing to overexertion and mind to an overdose of magic it simply can’t handle. Your limbs go limp but Sans keeps you in place until he’s completely spent, only releasing the bite when his magic finally dispels. He laps at the wounds he’s inflicted with his wide tongue, your blood gradually congealing and clotting. Only then does he notice you’ve passed out, red eyelight going wide and bright, distals raking through your hair but getting no reaction out of you.

“oh fuck, no...no no no...” he mutters, gathering up your limp body into his jacket and blinking the both of you back to his bed, quickly scrambling away the moment you hit the mattress. “fuck,” he growls again, pacing at the foot of the mattress, sockets going dark, shaking his skull. “why did you...stupid fucking idiot...you can’t, you know you can’t, she's gonna - “

Then you mumble something incoherent and turn over.

Sans collapses onto the bed in relief, clutching at his sternum, ribcage shaking with silent laughter as he stares at the bloody claim mark on your left shoulder, the one he made there moments ago in the midst of his delirium, the mark you begged him for.

“dammit, ya don’t even know what…” he trails off, rolling onto his side to spoon you, one arm draped over your waist, the other folded under his skull, trembling and muttering to himself.


	7. Chapter 7

It’s many, many hours before you come to, with a pounding headache and the most excruciating pain in your left shoulder, almost feeling like you just woke up from some brutal surgery but without the sweet mercy of intravenous morphine. You’re alone and confused, eyes unable to adjust to the absolute darkness of the room, but you easily recognize the familiar feel and smell of Sans’ bed beneath your leaden body.

“The hell,” you hiss, unable to sit up from overwhelming exhaustion. It’s been a while since you felt this much like road kill.

_Did I have some kind of accident?_

For a minute you wrack your muddled mind for an answer, but no memories bubble up to explain your current sorry state. Your shaky fingers ghost over the epicenter of pain, feel the shredded shirt collar stiff with dried blood - at least that’s what you’re guessing it is, considering how mangled your shoulder feels.

You’re thirsty, hungry, dirty and have to pee. You can’t quite remember the last time you’ve had to power through such severe fatigue, but with a few quick breaths you manage to steel yourself and lurch up into a sit through sheer willpower, groaning with the effort.

“Sa...Sans?” you call out, far quieter than you want. He likely won’t hear you at this volume. “Ugh, shit.”

Mere moments later a sliver of pale, dim gray light plays across the mattress and widens, your eyes straining against the waning gloom, and your gaze follows it to the slowly opening door, a familiar silhouette there. For a split second you’re amazed - _how did he even hear me?_ \- and watch in silent surprise as Sans enters, leaving the door open, a glass of water and a rag in hand.

“Hey...did you hear me calling for you?”

He nods, sits on the edge of the bed, eyelight roving over your body, pausing at the injury on your shoulder. The way he’s staring at it tells you it might be worse than you first thought.

“What happened to me?”

Annoyingly he doesn’t speak, just hands you the glass of water which you graciously take regardless and down a few deep swallows before setting it aside on the cluttered nightstand. Then he starts to dab at the wound, tracing around the scabs with the damp rag, being incredibly careful, unusually so.

“Sans, please answer me. Did I fall down somehow?”

He shakes his skull, keeps wiping up your dried blood, refusing to meet your insistent look.

“Okay...was I attacked?”

His hand freezes for a second, a telltale sign you’re onto something. 

_Someone attacked me? Wow, how come I can’t remember?_

“Well, what happened? Did you come to my rescue like a knight in shining armor?”

At that last guess you grin wryly, dipping your head down to try and catch his eye, but he grits his teeth and growls in a way that’s definitely not playful.

“i…” he finally begins, but trails off, shaking his skull again.

Yet that single muttered word is all you need to put the pieces together - though you can scarcely believe it.

“You…?” It’s your turn to shake your head, incredulous. “What do you mean, _you?_ Don’t tell me - “

Sans jolts up with a frustrated growl and slams the wet rag onto the floor, tipping his skull back and covering his face with his skeletal hands, pacing away off into the dark room, grumbling something incoherent before he utterly _snaps._

“yeah, i did it!” he shouts, voice harsh and hoarse. “i claimed ya! and i’m a first class _fucking idiot_ for it!”

Your brain rushes on adrenaline as you search for answers and meaning but find none, vexed at his temperamental outburst.

“Sans,” you say with very careful delicacy and gentleness, “what are you talking about?”

At your quiet question he pauses in his pacing, completely still.

Then he starts _laughing._

Just a chuckle at first, then a rasping, grating, horrible laugh, inhuman and surreal, almost echoing.

“you’re human…” he hisses out between guffaws, suddenly rushing back to you and roughly clasping your aching arms, giving you a rough shake, but you hold in a yelp of pain, making sure to not back down in the slightest. “ya don’t know the damn difference - _ha!_ just like all the other ones! heheheh…”

Quick on the uptake, realizing he’s talking about some other unfortunate humans and whatever atrocities he might have committed in the past, you feel resentment prickle your nape and sit up a little straighter, glaring hard into his contracted iris.

“I am not like _‘all the other ones’,_ Sans,” you whisper sternly, feeling oddly satisfied when his sockets narrow in anger at your challenge, a crooked, smug grin playing across your mouth when he gives you another jarring shake.

“shut up, ya dumb human bitch - ”

_SLAP!_

You reflexively backhand him so swiftly it surprises you, but he doesn’t even flinch. And It hurts your hand like all hell, because his face is exposed bone. For a moment that feels like an eternity you both just stare at each other, shocked and unsure, until Sans makes the next move and swiftly pins you down by the shoulders with a vicious snarl.

_**SMACK!** _

He hits you back.

_Hard._

“Asshole!” you cry out, jaw stinging, the blow instantly making your eyes well with hot, angry tears.

Just as quickly as he hit you Sans smashes his mouth against yours, easily keeping you pinned when you try to struggle under him, forcibly shoving his tongue past your grimacing lips. You whimper, pathetic, helpless, conflicted, confused, unable to truly resist.

“Stop, Sans stop,” you plead through sobs when he briefly pauses in his assault to press his hard body against yours, the fiery fighting spirit you had only seconds ago now completely snuffed out. You’re so tired and sore and furious, feeling utterly broken yet letting him break you further as you willingly take his next rough kiss as if you’re thirsty for it. 

_Nothing makes sense anymore, what the hell is happening?!_

“mine,” he growls against your mouth, barely audible. “made ya mine…”

His distals rake down your side and harshly clutch your hip, forcing another weak whimper from you but also causing your pelvis to reflexively buck up into his with raw desire. He nips down your throat to the wound, gently licks along the fresh scabs, partially soothing the intense pain there.

In a sudden flood of disjointed emotion and memory you begin to recall bits and pieces of the cavern, of its beauty, of the horrible bite mark on your shoulder and the inexplicable oneness you felt with Sans in that very moment his teeth sank into your flesh.

“Oh god, you did, you did,” your voice speaks unbidden, detached, coming from some part of you that’s subconscious and based on instinct rather than logic. “I remember...we…”

“mine,” Sans reiterates before lining his big teeth up with their marks, barely biting down, just hard enough to make you wince and claw at his ribcage in a futile attempt to push him off of you.

“Why, how?” you whine, unable to fully understand the gravity of your connection to him, to discern where your own emotions end and his begin, soul full of pain and longing and regret. Of course he offers no explanations as his distals shove under the hem of your sweats, roughly groping and grasping at your yielding flesh, making you at once aroused and scared. Logically sex is the last thing you want right now, but physically your needy body wants nothing more, heat flaring in your core and renewed lust swelling in your soul. 

Your jaw hurts so badly, and you’re sobbing from both the ache and the insult of his strike, yet still you readily open up for him, submit completely to his insistent touches, soon laid bare beneath him once again. He laps up your salty tears with a quiet groan as he moves inside you, hard hands exploring every exposed inch of your damaged skin, distals pausing to feel the deep scars, rough patches, bumps and strange textures as if relishing in it all, as if your terrible flaws are fascinating or desirous to him.

The pain within your soul returns, that stinging rawness you know to be not your own, an open wound that won’t heal. When you take in a shuddering breath between sobs and open your bloodshot, burning eyes you see that shared hurt etched on his face again, crimson eyelight dim within its worried socket, his expression just as it had been last night in the cavern. You reach up and cup both his cheekbones, wishing there was something to stop the overwhelming emotional hurting, heal the invisible damage you’re now forced to suffer with him. Sans leans his skull into your palms and makes a sound somewhere between a whimper and a groan, tone desperate and full of that poignant soul ache, slowing his motions, staying deep inside.

“sweetheart, i didn’t mean to…” he breathes, trembling distals barely tracing over your swollen, sore cheek, making you wince. It’s the closest thing to an apology he can bring himself to say, and you feel he’s being genuine, but you’re still embittered, humiliated and mad that he struck you. It’s a bizarre mix, pleasure and pain and melancholy and spite and affection all swirling together into something strangely bittersweet. 

“No! You fucking meant it, and so did I,” you retort, voice watery and weak despite trying to put some force behind it. His eye dilates in surprise and he stops moving completely, staring down at you for a long moment, your shaking hands still cradling his grimacing face. You sigh and sniffle, blinking away fresh tears, a certain question running repeatedly through your mind, one that won’t go away.

“Did you ever...with the other…?” 

It’s difficult to express just what it is you want to ask, but you need to know if you’re right - if you’re not like his _‘other ones’,_ if he ever emotionally bonded this way with someone else, if that’s what this unfathomable connection even is.

After a beat of hesitation he subtly shakes his skull no and his answer makes your soul swell with warmth, even forcing a small laugh and awkward smile out of you, though it makes your cheek hurt terribly.

“You’re such a fucking _bonehead,_ you know that? I mean - what is this even? Why can I feel you in here?” You bring your hands to the center of your chest and tap your sore sternum a few times.

Sans laughs quietly as well, leaning down to press his forehead against yours, sockets closed.

“i claimed you…as my mate…” he whispers, cool breath playing along your warm lips. “our souls…”

You shake your head, unable to make sense of his words.

“...souls?”

Sans brings a skeletal hand to hover over your chest, and for a moment you’re just baffled - until a sharp pulling sensation in your solar plexus makes you gasp, eyes wide, suddenly unable to breathe or even move. A bright glow emerges from the center of your sternum and you watch it coalesce into a perfect heart of colorful light, all else turned gray and shadow in the background, your unmoving gaze transfixed on what you somehow instinctively know is your soul - the very essence of your being.

_My soul...I can see my soul…souls are real...and they look like something..._

Slowly, delicately, Sans coaxes the heart forth, up to his parted mouth, single eye staring into your own stunned, unblinking orbs as the tip of his dusky tongue emerges and just barely runs along the shimmering crystalline surface of your soul.

A reflexive scream rips from your throat, spine arched and inner walls spasming around his magic still buried inside you, the resultant explosive overstimulation of having your soul touched in such a way completely overwhelming your senses. Every muscle tenses and your pulse hammers, blood roaring in your ears with the rush, stars bursting in your vision, synapses thrumming, feverish inner heat quickly drawing sweat to the surface of your prickling skin. Sans groans and rolls his pelvis, nestling his cock deeper into your convulsing cunt, smirking at your dramatic reaction.

“heh, _fuck,_ do that again,” he demands, flicking his tongue across your soul once more, growling with satisfaction when it forces the same fierce contractions out of you, stimulating himself as well with a kind of feedback echo that tingles within his own soul.

“Stop, _please, I can’t - !”_ you beg, but any more pleas are drowned out when another tidal wave of ecstasy crashes over your body, words giving way to more screams, mind soon made delirious by the beyond intense physical pleasure. 

When Sans climaxes mere moments later you barely even feel it through the exquisite torture he’s performing on your exposed soul. His tongue writhes and swirls all over your slick coalesced essence, unrelenting even in the midst of his torrential orgasm, deep moans meeting your strained cries as he unloads faster and harder than ever, eye blazing bright with a flare of powerful magic. 

Suddenly it’s too much even for him to handle, his own damaged soul feeling like it might just shatter if he keeps it up. With one last fierce growl and harsh thrust he releases your soul, letting it quickly escape back into your chest, magical light dimming until it disappears completely.

“sh - shit - fucking - ah, _fuck…”_ he mutters, bones quaking, teeth clenched, trying hard to calm his frenzied magic, barely managing to do so before his arms give out and he collapses onto you, mumbling curses against your neck.

“Too much, too much,” you pant, weakly smacking his back ribs in anger, shaking uncontrollably.

“y - yeah,” he agrees, breathing hard, whole body shuddering from the aftershock. 

Even though he knows you’re not properly bonded, Sans is surprised at how strong the connection between your souls is, strong enough to nearly send him over a line he doesn’t want to cross.

You’re going to die soon, after all.

He can smell it on you, the internal decay, getting stronger with each passing day.

But for now you have this, this complicated, terrible, wonderful thing that satisfies both of you in different ways, filling up some of the gaps within your minds and souls, placing bandages over old wounds while opening new ones, temporarily numbing the chronic pain of your tortured existences yet also forced to carry each other’s heavy burdens, adding to the pain. It is something akin to love, as both humans and monsters understand it, but neither of you are capable of acknowledging this, let alone confessing that four letter word out loud.

Sans slips his hard hands under your back and embraces you tightly, taking in your tainted scent, the feel of every point of contact, the sharp ridges of your scapulae covered in sallow skin jutting against his metacarpals, your hidden bones shaped so much like his own. He’ll get to see them uncovered in the near future, and the thought makes him shudder again, not with anticipation, but with dread.


	8. Chapter 8

From that day onward, you deteriorate rapidly. By the next evening you find it incredibly difficult to get out of bed again, and a sense of hunger never returns. Within two more days thirst leaves you as well, Sans having to practically force you to drink water. It’s a symptom you were long aware of as signaling the end, the point of no return, your weak, ruined, overtaxed body finally ready to give in to the cancer that’s been gnawing at it for years. You tell Sans as much, but he doesn’t really react - at least not in a way you expect. Instead of getting upset or becoming distant he simply stays with you in his bed as much as possible, silently laying at your side, sometimes holding you, sometimes being held by you. He indulges you in conversation if you initiate it, but most of the time, just being in each other’s company is enough.

It's more than you ever could've asked for, his companionship...since you truly believed you would die alone.

Your vision begins to blur, steadily getting worse, until all you can make out is light, shadow and colors. It’s something you try to hide, clinging to what little stubborn pride you have left, but ultimately fail to keep it a secret when Sans notices you repeatedly miss grabbing the water glass he holds out to you and the books he sets on the bedside table remain untouched. After that, he doesn’t leave your side at all for three days straight, until one morning you drift out of sleep and sense someone else is in the room with you instead, the warm thread connecting your soul to Sans stretched thin.

“Papyrus?” you inquire, and the large steady hand that covers yours tells you it’s indeed him sitting on the edge of the bed. A small smile manages to tug at your chapped lips, glad you get to speak with him one last time.

“Hello, Human.” His voice is far quieter than usual, though you would rather he be his boisterous, loud self, even at a time like this. You don't want to make him feel sad. You're not worth his sorrow...

“Hey, big guy. Sorry...you gotta see me...like this.”

“No, I Am - “ a small, sad sigh escapes him. “I Wanted To Make Sure I Said Thank You, Before…”

You narrow your blind eyes in confusion.

“For what?”

“For Providing My Brother And I Some Happiness Over The Last Few Weeks. Your Presence Has Been...More Meaningful Than You Might Have Realized. There Are Not Many Things Left In Our World That Bring Joy.”

His sweet sentiment would normally make you tear up, but your bloodshot eyes and dehydrated glands won’t allow any tears to form. Instead, you give his hand a subtle squeeze and choose your response carefully, needing to make the most of this moment.

“Make sure...my body…” you trail off, weakly coughing, but Papyrus knows what you’re requesting. He shakes his skull and though you can’t really tell he did so, you furrow your brow in a stern expression, taking his silence to mean refusal.

“You took care of me...let me...return the favor. Please. You all...need it.”

After a long pause Papyrus finally relents and nods, watches you slip back into unconsciousness, your breathing shallow. The aching in his soul tells him you’re not long for this world and he clutches at his sternum, gently patting your hand before he stands straight and quietly leaves the room. When he reaches the upper landing Sans immediately gazes up at his brother from his place in the living room below, pausing mid-pace, hands tightly fisted at his sides.

There aren’t many moments Papyrus has looked so troubled - not since Sans came home on that fateful day so many years ago, with a bleeding crater in his skull and ugly borrowed eye shoved into his socket. Now his pained expression is close to that, wringing his phalanges and slightly hunched, usual trademark smile gone.

“You should go to her now,” he tells Sans in an uncharacteristically subdued tone once he’s descended the stairs. 

Without a word Sans immediately blinks away.

The thick, heavy scent of death permeates his room, that inexplicable sense of decay wafting from your wasted body. Sans moves quiet as a shadow to the bed, sits on the edge next to you. With a soft sigh he tilts his skull and delicately brushes his knuckles over your cool, smooth cheek. Your eyelids flutter open and your dry lips smile wanly, sensing its him despite being unable to see. 

“Hey bonehead,” you whisper, glassy irises drifting up to meet his steady gaze, though he knows your vision is pretty much gone at this point. “How do I look?”

“like shit,” Sans mutters, grinning bitterly when you rasp out the weakest, saddest laugh he’s ever heard.

“Yeah...thanks…you too.”

“heh, y’know i make this look good.”

He runs a skeletal hand over his broken skull with a smug smirk, making you smile a hair wider and shake your head, then your smile falters, taking in a deep breath, and it seems a monumental effort for you to just keep talking.

“Sans...thanks, really...been fun...hope you guys...get outta here...someday…big world up there…”

You reach up to place a cold palm on his sharp jaw, and he cradles your hand with trembling phalanges.

“Don’t give up...okay?”

Sans nods, silent, pressing harder on your hand when it goes limp to keep it against his face, staring at your open but unseeing eyes, listening to the last few rattling breaths in your lungs become quiet as your chest slowly stills. With his free hand he draws forth your dimming soul, still so brilliantly colorful against the shadowed gloom barely filtering in through the open doorway. Your heart shaped essence hovers above his hollow bone palm, radiating magical warmth that’s rapidly waning, and for a split second Sans contemplates taking it into himself, risking the potential dire consequences of absorbing your power and consciousness, truly binding you both together as one...but the moment is fleeting and soon he watches your soul splinter and break with a sound like shattering glass, then fade away to nothing, the light of your existence snuffed out completely, darkness closing in once again. 

He feels his own soul crack and burn at the loss, sockets subtly wincing from the intense pain.

If he had let himself truly soulbond with you, as he had been so sorely tempted to do mere days ago, he would have shattered and dusted in that very instant as well.

For a long time he stays there at your side, nuzzling into your soon stiff hand as blood drains away and rigor mortis gradually sets in. Yet still he remains, unmoving, gazing at your expressionless face with a narrowed, dim crimson iris, black pupil blown wide, mouth hung in a thin, pained grimace.

How long did he stay with you, in that last moment that seemed to go on forever? He doesn’t remember when he finally moved again, lifting and cradling your lifeless body to his ribcage, or how he pressed his forehead to yours in a small gesture of affection. Sans didn’t even realize Papyrus was looking on with worried sockets as he descended the stairs with you, stood in the living room for a moment, seemingly lost, before blinking away to the shed, where he gently laid you out on the butchering table, like he had with so many dead bodies before.

That’s when he comes back to the reality of it all, the present moment, with your gray lips and pallid skin under his touch, distals running up your scarred belly to remove his loaned shirt, which he buries his face into, inhaling deeply through his vestibule, the scent of you mixed with that of death, both smells so familiar. His phalanges glide down your frigid thighs as the sweats are removed, and for uncountable minutes he takes in the damaged human female form before him, a mix of desire at your nudity pooling in his pelvis like a Pavlovian response and raw hunger tugging at his spine, hazy mind skipping through recent memories in a disjointed jumble of confused emotions and visions, bones aching with combined need, black tarry drool running down his chin, dripping in thick drops to further stain his already ruined shirt.

Without further delay he smoothly climbs up onto the table, straddles your body, hefting your legs up - _always the last part to go stiff,_ he knows from experience - to hang limply against his femurs. He traces along the points of your hipbones jutting up through thin skin, sinking down and giving each a few gentle nips, recalling how doing so used to make you squeal and giggle. Sans rasps out a breathy laugh at the dim, distant recollection, absentmindedly stroking your sides as he moves his hard body to rest flush against yours, running his distal tips over the scars and curves, knowing the feel of it all so intimately.

“one last time, sweetheart...whadda ya say?” he whispers into your wounded shoulder, the bite mark there never having had a real chance to heal properly, still dark and bruised and scabbed. He laps at it tenderly, groaning at how wonderful the salt of your frigid skin still tastes, even relishing in the slight metallic tang of your old dried blood. He reaches down between your legs and frees his conjured magic, cock bobbing out to briefly rest on your downy mound before being forced inside your now unyielding, hard, icy slit. 

No matter, he’ll enjoy this regardless, not even really feeling how cold and stiff you are, and definitely not caring as he works his way inside, one hand holding a leg up, the other cradling your head. It’s almost loving, the way he fucks your dead body, taking his time, going slow, face buried in your neck, groaning and growling and muttering sweet, sometimes dirty nothings into your deaf ear.

“i’m gonna miss ya,” he mumbles, peppering your neck with sharp bites as he unloads, shuddering with release, laughing quietly for reasons he doesn’t really understand, something like melancholy mixed with visceral pleasure churning within his freshly cracked soul. “ah fuck, wish i coulda kept you all to myself...get outta this fuckin’ hellhole together...like ya wanted...heh…what a dream...” he rambles on, starting to move inside you again, intent on getting as much out of this horrific, deviant sin as possible before he has to perform the inevitable task of doling you out to the rest of Snowdin, piece by piece, losing you forever.

_hate sharing…shouldn’t have to…my claim...my mate...mine…the one thing..._

Sans doesn’t realize he’s still talking out loud as his teeth find their mark and passionately renew the wounds at your shoulder, though no hot blood rushes up to meet his tongue this time, only a thick, slow ooze forced out by the pressure of his bite. He groans out low and loud, trailing off into a needy, desperate whimper, suckling out as much of the sweet, tangy, salty fluids as possible as he works himself toward a second climax, swifter and more intense than the first, adding to the pool of viscous cum already sitting within your womb, unable to be absorbed, gushing out around his languidly thrusting cock to trickle down onto the stained, marred table in a dimly glowing puddle.

“fuck...i…oh babe…” he growls softly after opening his jaw to release the bite, dead flesh stuck in his teeth, letting go of your thigh to grab your face with both hands and press his bloodied mouth against your pale parted lips. 

“damn you, damn...i gotta…mmm, no, no…not gonna let go...not yet…please…”

He shakes his broken skull, confused and spent, delusional, caught up in a surreal moment between the dark fantasy of staying this way with you forever and the insidious reality of your death finally creeping into his scattered mind. His magic wanes and fades but he doesn’t move away, refusing to let go of your body for hours, soul aching, mind blank, until Papyrus quietly comes into the shed, hanging back by the door and staring at the disturbing scene before him. 

Unsure of what to do or say, Papyrus takes a few tentative steps closer, gloved hand reaching out to his trembling brother, still hunched over your naked body, arms wrapped around your back, forehead resting on the table by your neck, bones quietly clacking.

“Sans…” calls Papyrus, but gets no response. “Sans, Do You Need Any Help?” He carefully places a steady hand on Sans’ shaking shoulderblade, which jolts at his touch, but he knows better than to relent his attempt at comforting his brother. “It Was Her Dying Wish To Have Her Body Be Put To Good Use, Right?” Papyrus says softly, rubbing small circles on his brother’s hard scapula. “She Wanted To Help Everyone Survive. We Should Grant That Request.” Sans shudders with a silent sob and slowly raises his skull to peer up at Papyrus, sockets blank and tearless despite his mournful state.

“...she...right...yeah...” mutters Sans, letting Papyrus gently tug his arm and take his hand to help him off the table, even though it’s not really necessary. Sans just stands there, dejected, staring down at the worn wooden plank floor, eyelight still missing. Papyrus sighs and gazes at your body, sockets glancing over the unhealed claim mark on your shoulder, and the sight of those meaningful wounds makes his soul sting with pity.

“I was not aware that you had...” he trails off, looking back at Sans, who hasn’t moved at all. “I am so sorry, brother.”

Sans only shrugs, then after a few beats goes to the shelves holding all his tools, takes down the machete, running his distals over the long blade, base to point, bone hissing along steel. Without a word he returns to the table and, in one swift motion, decapitates you. Your head rolls to the side, dark blood oozing from the stump of your neck, and Papyrus takes this as his cue to go, reluctantly leaving Sans alone to his regrettable, tragic work.

It takes Sans over two hours to break down your parts, working slower than usual, occasionally pausing as some brief emotion or memory surfaces to interrupt the flow of cutting and portioning. The one thing he doesn’t touch until the very end is your head, and when the rest of the butchering is completed, he hesitates for a long time, staring at your face.

His mind must have blanked out at some point, because suddenly there’s nothing left but a mostly defleshed skull in his hands and a pile of brain matter nearby, resting in a plastic container. He notices your clouded eyes remain intact, faintly remembering your strange antics on the night he met you, smiling as he gingerly removes each orb from its socket, optic nerves easily snapping.

_‘Aw, but **eye** was having so much fun…’_

“heh. good one, babe.”

Once your skull is picked completely clean, he carefully washes it in steaming hot water, though he has no recollection of how the large pot got there, of when he could’ve possibly gone to the kitchen and boiled it. He makes sure to scrub away every bit of residual blood and flesh off the bone, paying attention to its shape and structure and feel, remembering how each crest and edge defined your facial features, the way certain teeth were exposed when you smiled.

“let’s keep you looking beautiful, sweetheart,” he murmurs, running a thumb along your smooth wet cheekbone as he takes your cleaned skull to the sink, where the basin is soon filled with dilute hydrogen peroxide and fresh cold water. He gently lowers your skull in, watching the surface ripples warp the shape of your hollow sockets, briefly imagining they’re like his own, expressive and malleable, full of magical life.

_wouldn’t that be something…_

The next day Sans lifts your now ivory white, pristine skull from the solution, rinses and dries it thoroughly, admiring his work, pressing his bone forehead to yours, sockets closed.

“never gonna let you go,” he murmurs, tenderly stroking your mandible with his knuckles. “don’t worry, baby girl...i won’t give up. we’ll get out of here someday...”

With a sad, bitter, crooked grin he places your skull on a high shelf, next to his favorite old cleaver and, after one last longing look up at your skeletal face, blinks away.


	9. Epilogue

Six years later

***

Undyne is dust, finally, that fucking bitch.

Sans won the waiting game. He and Papyrus made it through. The so-called Queen didn’t. Just as he’d planned.

He never gave up. No matter how hard things got.

It only takes another two years after Queen _Undick's_ death for enough humans to fall down, enough to finally break the barrier. Sans makes quick work of doing just that, forcing the final human to take the souls and set the Underground free.

Not that there’s many monsters left to free anymore...

For a good few days Sans tried to get his eye out of the Core, but it was impossible, the damage he’d done out of spite and revenge making the complex machine dangerously unstable. It could blow the whole mountain sky high, he knows it could. After failing at that, he retrieved the few things he counted as important from his home in Snowdin, stuffed them all into a backpack, made sure Papyrus was ready and headed outside, into the cold, thin night air, a trillion white stars glittering in the clear black sky, the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his entire miserable, cursed existence.

“BROTHER...WHAT IS THAT?” asks Papyrus, beady sockets glancing down. He’s seated next to Sans on a wide flat stone atop Mount Ebott, stargazing, taking in the first sights and sounds of freedom, relief and hope now thrumming in his soul, but out of the corner of his vision he had noticed something pale peeking out of the open backpack at their feet. Sans looks over at his brother with a mad, wide grin, then down at the backpack, then back up at the majestic sky, chuckling quietly.

“said she likes astronomy too,” Sans mumbles, reaching down to gently stroke his distals against the object, and Papyrus places a gloved hand over his toothy mouth in mild shock and realization.

“SANS, IS THAT REALLY - ?”

“got out together, just like she wanted. heh, something finally turned out okay for once, right Paps?”

Papyrus is silent for a few seconds, but then slowly nods in agreement, staring at your pearly skull, round hollow sockets turned toward the heavens, as if you’re stargazing right along with them.

“Y - YES...EVERYTHING IS FINE NOW. I AM, AH - GLAD SHE IS WITH US…”

Sans smiles wider, humming with his own strange version of contented happiness, bright crimson gaze turning toward the shimmering orange lights of a nearby town.

“ya hungry, bro?”

“OF COURSE, BROTHER!”

With a satisfied sigh Sans carefully wraps your skull up in his old shirt, the one that still smells ever so faintly like you, zips closed the backpack and stands, slinging the bag over his shoulder.

“let’s go find something to eat.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check out this [awesome fanart by Yamilian/La Kurosidad](https://kurosidad.tumblr.com/post/639633406169432064/just-finished-this-morning-reading-the-fanfic)
> 
> And thank you so much to everyone who has read, commented and left kudos. Such a huge, overwhelmingly positive response on this work has been way beyond my expectations!


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